Footprints Pommy Harmar

This month, as spring gets properly into its stride, we go gardening.
We start with Carol Stone, one of the volunteers from Alice Park Community Garden down below Larkhall on the London Road. If you have always wanted to know how to stop slugs and aphids munching your beans, well - listen in..
Marion Harney, Professor of Buildings and Landscape Conservation at University of Bath takes us around Sydney Gardens, the only Georgian Pleasure Gardens left in the UK and tells us how the Georgians liked to have fun.
Amie Cook, Community Ecologist for the Team Wilder Ecological Advisory Service gives advice on how to encourage wildlife into your back garden. This is a service offered by Avon Wildlife Trust via site visits, video calls or workshops.
Cat Baker, ecologist and manager of WIld About Bath takes us around a wild garden overlooking Horsecombe Vale, tells us what she loves about gardening and gives tips on composting.
Credits
Music: Audionautix
Produced by Pommy Harmar
Links
Alice Park Community Garden: www.facebook.com/aliceparkcommunitygarden/?locale=en_GB
Team Wilder Ecological Advisory Service, Avon Wildlife Trust: www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk/team-wilder-ecological-advisory-service
Wild About Bath: www.wildaboutbath.org

In this episode we take a deep dive underneath the city of Bath and discover the geology that underpins it.
Professor Maurice Tucker from the Bath Geological Society tells us about the father of Geology, William Smith
Mike Williams is a landscape historian and ecologist and he talks about the affect of the landscape on settlement and biodiversity. He also shows us petrification in action!
Finally in our feature we go underground! Simon Hart, Managing Director and Owner of Hartham Park Stone Mine takes us down the mine where we meet a 16 ton chainsaw and see 200 year old graffiti.
Credits
Music: Audionautix
Produced by Pommy Harmar
Links
Bath Geological Society -www.bathgeolsoc.org.uk
Hartham Park Stone Mine - https://www.lovellstonegroup.com/quarry/hartham-park-bath-stone

For this episode you will need to grab your popcorn, dim the lights and settle down for a magical journey to the heart of the filmmaking industry in the historic city of Bath.
Rachel Bowers from the Bath Film Office describes the process for bringing upwards of two hundred actors and crew into the heart of the city to film.
Charlie McCLoud gives us his very own ‘Life in the day of an Extra’. 
Plus the Holburne Museum's Chief Operating Officer Emma Morris tells us the inside story of working in a building which famously doubled as Lady Danbury’s grand estate in the hit series Bridgerton
Links
Bath Film Office - www.bathfilmoffice.co.uk
Holburne Museum - www.holburne.org
Credits
Music: Richard Frohlich Media and the Texas Radio Theatre Company.
A short melody of Luigi Boccherini's minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op.13, No.6. Played by Howard Geisel
Produced by Pommy Harmar

Happy New Year and welcome back to Footprints!
In this our first episode of 2024, we look back at our highlights from 2023. More than 40 people took part in the shows last year and a huge thanks must go to them for making the episodes so fascinating and varied to listen to. They and the organisations they represent are at the very heart of the Bathscape and we will hear from many more in 2024.
Clips
Ep 13 February - Living Working Bath: Mark Batterham shows us around the Moorlands Estate, the first council estate planned after the second world war and opened by Nye Bevin.
Ep 14 March - Art in the Landscape: Marian Hill talks about her exquisitely intricate and accurate identification charts of bugs, beetles and butterflies, using collage.
Ep 15 April - Wellbeing in Nature: Lucy Bartlett leads a walk for students as part of Be Well week and three students talk about why being outdoors helps their mental health.
Ep 16 May - The Call of the Wild: One of the wildlife enthusiasts featured in the episode Catherine Turner talks about her passion for spiders and has me peering deep into the long grass .
Ep 17 June - The Love of Trees: Joe McSorley, lead ranger for the National Trust shows us around Prior Park Gardens and tells us why the gardens were created and what the trees were used for.
Ep 18 July - Haile Selassie in Bath: Ras Benji allows us to tag along on a tour of Fairfield House where Emperor Haili Selassie lived during his time in exile during WW2.
Ep 18 July - Haile Selassie in Bath: Pauline Swaby-Wallace shows around the Windrush Centre and describes what it was like to come to Britain at that time.
Ep 19 August - What did the Romans ever do for Bath?: Combe Down resident Helen talks about the time she found a skeleton of a roman citizen buried in her garden wall!
Ep 20 September - Farming in Bath: Bob Honey has a pedigree herd of Herefords, but he also has a cider apple orchard. This is a clip of him describing the year in the life of an apple. You will hear glorious names of apple varieties such as Slack-ma-Girdle!
Ep 21 October - Radical Bath: In this clip, Professor emerita June Hannam talks about why Bath was important to the Suffragettes and tree planting at Eagle House.
Ep 21 October - Radical Bath: the episode brings us right into the present with Kidical Mass campaigners talking about their mission to create safer streets for children to cycle in.
Ep 22 November - Bath at Night: We visit the West of England Falconry Centre in Newton St Loe and hear about Bella the rock owl during one of their flying displays.
Ep 23 December - Three Grand Schemes: This episodes hears about Bath Preservation Trust's renovations to Beckford's Tower, one of the National Trust's Green Corridor schemes at Bathampton Meadows and the recently-opened Cleveland Pools. In this clip three inspiring women talk about their experience of swimming in temperatures of around 10 degrees!
Our thanks to all our contributors throughout 2023
Stuart Burroughs, director, Museum of Bath at Work
Diana Ahmed, Twerton artist
Mark Batterham, local historian
Jessica Palmer, Bath artist
Perry Harris, Bath artist, watercolourist and cartoonist
Marian Hill, Bath illustrator
Chris Pound, architect, writer and World Heritage expert
George Cook, project officer, Avon Wildlife Trust
Mike WIlliams, Bath naturalist, specialist in beetles
Catherine Turner, Bath naturalist, specialist in spiders
Alan Rayner, Bath naturalist, specialist in mosses, lichens and liverworts
Helen Hobbs, organiser, Chalcombe Toad Patrol
Karen...

This month we celebrate three grand projects happening in Bath - Cleveland Pools, Beckford's Tower and Bathampton Meadows.
Cleveland Pools - back in 1801 a new bylaw was passed - the Bathwick Water Act. It prohibited nude bathing in the river Avon and so was born Cleveland pools because the swimmers had nowhere to swim.
Cleveland Pools is only a short walk the other side of Sydney Gardens and has recently reopened to the pubic following years of planning and designing, lottery applications and of course the building works. 
Now, with its highly modern heat pump allowing it to be heated during the summer, it has already attracted Bath’s keen cold water swimmers. Its manager Sam Grief and some hardy swimmers bring it to life.
Beckford’s Tower stands tall on the top of Lansdown, visible for miles around. It’s closed at the moment, shrouded in scaffolding and plastic while all kinds of major renovation works are carried out. It was built for William Beckford, a writer, collector and slave owner and Dr Amy Frost from the Bath Preservation Trust tells us about its complex history.
We finish the episode at Bathampton Meadows which is a new acquisition for the National Trust. It is one of their 20 green corridors sitting just below Little Solsbury Hill by the river Avon.  Joanna Rolfe from the National Trust tells us how it came about and what plans they have for the site.
Credits
Music: Audionautix
Produced by Pommy Harmar
Links
Bathampton Meadows, National Trust
Bath Preservation Trust
Cleveland Pools

The autumn has arrived and it’s that time of year to hunker down and stay warm. It's the perfect season to explore the nighttime in and around Bath.
In this episode we find out about the night sky and visit the Herschel museum where Uranus was discovered back in the 18th century. We’ll hear about the owls in Newton St Loe, delve into the reasons why some animals are nocturnal and our very own batman Dan Merrett will take us on a bat walk around Combe Down.
In this episode we start by meeting the owls at the West of England Falconry Centre in Newton St Loe. Naomi Johns, centre manager tells us all about their owls. Their events start again in early march.  
In our Expert Eye section, we find out about the Herschel family. William Herschel was born in Hannover in 1738 and came to Britain as a refugee fleeing the French when he was just 18. He was an accomplished musician and came to Bath to take up the post of organist at the very fashionable Octagon chapel in Bath.
The manager of the Herschel museum in Bath Joe Middleton tells us how he came to make the transition to one of the most famous astronomers of his day.
We finish with a bat walk with our very own batman - Bathscape’s Manager Dan Merrett and meet at least three species!
Credits
Music: Night Music by Kevin MacLeod (YouTube Audio Library)
Produced by Pommy Harmar
Links
West of England Falconry Centre - www.westofenglandfalconry.org.uk
Herschel Museum - www.herschelmuseum.org.uk
Bathscape - www.bathscape.co.uk