London Road & Snow Hill Partnership


about us
THE LONDON ROAD AND SNOW HILL PARTNERSHIP WAS SET UP BY LOCAL RESIDENTS AND BUSINESS PEOPLE IN 1998 TO HELP REGENERATE THE SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND WELLBEING IN AN AREA SPLIT BY THE LONDON ROAD.
LRSHP IS A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE WITH 60 MEMBERS AND 16 BOARD MEMBERS, ALL OF WHOM ARE VOLUNTEERS.
IT HELPS PROMOTE COMMUNITY PROJECTS AND ENCOURAGES NEW COMMUNITY GROUPS.
WITH FRIENDS OF KENSINGTON MEADOWS, LRSHP HELPS THE COUNCIL MANAGE KENSINGTON MEADOWS PLAYING FIELD AND LOCAL NATURE RESERVE. IT HAS WORKED WITH THE COUNCIL TO KEEP RIVERSIDE YOUTH AND COMMUNITY CENTRE OPEN. IT HAS ENCOURAGED OTHER COMMUNITY CENTRE PROJECTS.
Updates & Posts
London Rd Lime Trees – Central Reservation
Cleveland Bridge – Weight Restriction to be Lifted
Bath Breathes: Clean Air 2021
Widening Pavements: Social Distancing
History
Fosse Way
The origins of the London Road or the Fosse Way are lost in the mists of antiquity. Almost certainly there must have been a track along the north bank of the adjacent River Avon, perhaps as far back as the Stone Age. What we do know for certain is that the Romans created the 300-kilometre road from Lincoln to Exeter between the years 43 and 51 AD.

Romans
As Roman Bath, or Aquae Sulis (The Waters Of Sulis Minerva) developed as a spa town with its famous baths, the Fosse Way became one of the principal roads of the Roman Province of Britannia. The town of Aquae Sulis was at the centre of the most settled part of the province, with wealth villas and productive farmland all around it. The road must have been busy with both civilian and military traffic, and it is probable that even the Emperors who visited Britannia, including Hadrian, Septimus Severus and Constantine the Great would have visited Bath, coming along the Fosse Way.


Saxons
We know little of the events along the Fosse Way during those early Saxon years, but almost certainly, at the end of May in 709 AD, the body of St Aldhelm, England`s first native-born Saxon Saint was carried along the Fosse Way to his final resting place at Malmsbury Abbey.
18th Century Bath
By the 1770s the farms and cottages of the old Fosse Way were giving way to the grand terraces of the London Road. Walcot Parade and Walcot Terrace appear in the 1770s. Royal patronage of a type notable in Bath, came with the building of York Villa, where the Grand Old Duke of York kept a bevvy of mistresses. Albemarle Buildings appears in 1789. It was renamed Walcot Buildings in 1803. Kensington appears within the year as does Bath`s last grand development at Grosvenor. Plans for a vast pleasure garden on what is now Kensington Meadow were only thwarted by the sudden bankruptcy of the Bank of Bath in 1793: a banking crash which took much of the city`s wealth with it.
