Bath & North East Somerset Council

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Bath Record Office is currently closed but we are planning a safe reopening. Although we are closed for research appointments, we are able to respond to enquiries by email, phone or post.

Glass slide of Great Bath shortly after its rediscovery Glass slide of Great Bath shortly after its rediscovery Show image info

Glass slide of Great Bath shortly after its rediscovery

Images

Within the Record Office collections there are images in many different formats: printed and negative photographs, glass slides, transparencies, engravings and lithographs, sketchbooks, scrapbooks and original artworks.

There are few catalogue entries for the image collections, but the Archives and Local Studies collections do hold printed indexes to some of these collections which staff can use to help you find images that may be of interest to you.

Local Studies

The Bath in Time website acts as a finding aid for many of the Local Studies collections, including the loose prints, photographs, glass slides, and three major scrapbook collections (Hunt, Russell, Chapman).

Local Studies hold hundreds of glass slides, including: the Mowbray Green slides used in the preparation of his work on 18th century architecture; and the collection of George Love Dafnis, a turn of the 20th century amateur photographer who provided many familiar views of the area as they were published as postcards.

We also hold the image collections of the Bath Chronicle 1970-2007 that were donated when the newspaper moved their offices. The majority of this collection has not been digitised, although there are some subject areas covered on Bath in Time, such as the Bath Blitz and Royal Visits.

Archives

The Archives have a core collection of printed photographs in the PX/ series, a few of which are listed on the catalogue. There are additional photographs, slides, glass slides, albums and other images spread throughout the archives in various collections, but very few of these have been systematically catalogued or digitised.

The main collections include:

  • Bath & West – photographs mainly relating to the annual show (ref 0038/)
  • Police prisoner photographs – these albums are delicate and have been digitised for inclusion in the Bath Ancestors database (ref 0661/)
  • Civil Defence – albums of their exercises and operations
  • Twerton local history – a collection of albums (ref 0334/)
  • Stothert & Pitt – loose photographs and glass plates in several accessions (ref 0435/, 0544/, 1283/)
  • Stanley Fitch – personal albums of photographs in Bath and area (ref 1295/)
  • Snow Hill  - clearance and redevelopment of housing in 1950s (ref 1198/)
  • Sir Henry Vaughan Berry – personal album of his time as a commissioner in Hamburg 1945-49 (ref 1175/)
  • David McLaughlin (ref 1042/) – photographs of his work as Conservation Architect for Bath City Council
  • Greystone Bird – a renowned local photographer, several of his glass slides are spread across a number of accessions
  • Bath City Streetscapes – photographs taken by Bath City Council during the 1960s and 1970s, often relating to building repairs and renovations
  • Bath City Planning Department slides - slides made by the department in the course of their work (ref BC/8/12/1)