Shopfront Installation in Bath

Bath presents the most tightly controlled shopfront environment of anywhere we work. The entire city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised for its unbroken sweep of Georgian architecture built from the local honey-coloured Bath stone, and Bath and North East Somerset Council — BANES — applies correspondingly strict planning and conservation controls to any alteration visible from the street. Milsom Street, one of the finest Georgian shopping streets in the country, and the area around Pulteney Bridge and Southgate, all sit within this heritage designation, and virtually every building is either listed or makes a clear contribution to the World Heritage setting.

Shopfront work in Bath is planning-led from the outset. Almost any replacement requires planning permission, and where the building is listed — which is the case for the majority of premises on Milsom Street and throughout the central shopping streets — listed building consent is also required. BANES conservation officers expect designs that use traditional materials and proportions: painted timber or high-specification timber-effect framing, correctly detailed pilasters and corbels, fascias sized to established datum lines, and glazing bar patterns that reflect the Georgian architectural language of the street. We prepare detailed heritage statements and elevational drawings for these applications and work closely with BANES throughout the consent process, which can take considerably longer than in a typical high street setting.

Southgate, redeveloped as a more contemporary shopping quarter within the historic city, offers a degree more flexibility for modern shopfront design, though even here the council pays close attention to how new retail frontages relate to the surrounding World Heritage context and the sightlines toward the Abbey and the historic core. Widcombe and the area around Bathwick have a mix of independent retail in converted Georgian terraces, again requiring conservation-sensitive shopfront treatment given their position within the wider heritage setting.

Away from the immediate centre, Oldfield Park, Larkhall, and Combe Down serve their communities with neighbourhood high streets where the building stock, while often still attractive Victorian terraces, falls outside the strictest World Heritage controls, and we have considerably more scope here for standard aluminium shopfront installations, roller shutters, and automatic doors.

Given the volume of tourism Bath attracts throughout the year, we design security shutters for the central shopping streets to be as visually discreet as possible — frequently recessed within a heritage-appropriate fascia box — so that the historic character of the street is preserved outside trading hours as well as during the day.