Carters at Work
Year Completed : 1988
Size : 4.2m x 1.5m (14ft x 5ft)
Location : Shires Yard, off Milsom Street, Bath
Current Status : Yard redeveloped as Milsom Place and mural removed.
MURALWATCH - do you have any information about this missing mural?
We were in touch with the developers/management of Milsom Place a few years ago but they didn't give us any clues about the fate of this mural. We would love to hear from anyone who might have any knowledge about its fate.
In the late eighties, a development was proposed in between Milsom Street and Broad Street in central Bath. This was to be called Shire’s Yard, because one Thomas Shire had run a yard on the site in the eighteenth century. From here, goods were received for transport by horse and cart between Bath and London. We were approached to submit designs, and the theme was to be something which evoked the horses and carters who had used this area. Researching, it was difficult to find contemporary drawings of the kind of wagons or containers that would have been in use in the eighteenth century. As on other occasions, I mixed authentic details with some creative imagination. I modelled up a kind of flat bed wagon a little like that in John Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’ painting and our wicker log basket became the model for a container carried by one of the men. I asked the advice of a girl who had a good knowledge of working horses’ harness and we had to assume that this had not changed that much over the years. I wanted to work on a bold scale in this mural so we chose to use a coarse clay body known as ‘crank.’ We stained the pieces with iron and manganese oxides, colouring the whole in shades of brown and ochre to give a richly toned monochrome effect. The mural was to go on a plain Bath stone wall and rather than appearing to be superimposed on top we wanted the low relief to emerge from the surface. The mural, together with a descriptive piece along side, gave passers by an interesting insight into an unusual aspect of Bath’s history. There is a downside of a mural such as this being so relevant to the history of the site. Shires Yard was redeveloped in 2007/8. The shopping precinct is now known as Milsom Place and the image of carters and their wagon is no longer relevant. The mural was removed by the developers and we have not been to ascertain what has happened to it since.
Lat/Long : 51.383844, -2.361209
Present whereabouts of mural not known. MURALWATCH - We need YOUR help! |