IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bath Place, TAUNTON, TA1 4EP

Bath Place on a sunny June evening.

The chapel is off Bath Place, see Image for a wider view. The Quaker Heritage website offers a statement of significance stating that it was built in 1816 to replace an earlier meeting house on the same site, but the History Files website dates it to 1834. The Quaker site also says it has been "very much altered externally and internally. A new small meeting room by Philip Proctor Associates was added at the south end of the building in 2014/5 and the old meeting room was converted to provide ancillary spaces". Perhaps because of this internal conversion, it is not nationally listed.

According to a local history trail leaflet, Bath Place was the main road west from the market place until 1894. It is still a public right of way shown on OS maps. Strangely, the houses here are not listed but the brick wall opposite (not shown here but seen in Image) is, as it dates from 1694.

A mews-type shopping street to the rear of Corporation Street.

Now a bingo venue. This was the old cinema, built in 1932-3 to the designs of W.T. Benslyn, which includes the sculpted panel above the entrance that proclaims 'Love and Life Entangled in the Film'.

It will be pretty cosy with all that variety on offer. This bar is in the old School of Art, a substantial building that was built in 1905; Samson and Cottam designed the neo-classical façade (as Hunts Court). The street itself dates back only to the turn of the nineteenth century.

Formerly the Somerset College of art, built 1905, architects C Samson and A B Cottam. Now a restaurant and events venue. Listed grade II (List entry 1060040).

A pleasant little shopping street that is tucked away and traffic free.

This ancient lane runs past a church and into the High Street. It dates from the Middle Ages and was the principal passage to the west of the town until the late nineteenth century.

A fine Art Deco building; here is an extract from http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/13953 "The second cinema in Taunton to bear the name Odeon was initially opened as the Gaumont Palace Theatre on 11th July 1932. It was built for Albany Ward, a division of Gaumont British Theatres. It featured a restaurant at first floor level above the main foyer, which had decorative friezes of birds and flowers painted by artist Frank Barnes. In the auditorium, the decoration was elaborate with shell-like wall sconces and a highly decorated ceiling panel. The proscenium was 50 feet wide and the stage was 74 feet wide, and 21 feet deep. There were eight dressing rooms. It was renamed Odeon in 1969, and was closed by the Rank Organisation on 5th September 1981. From November 1981 it was converted into a Top Rank Bingo Club, which later became a Mecca Bingo Club. The former projection box has been converted into offices, but the auditorium and foyers remains pretty well intact. It also retains many of its external features, the canopy has been enclosed in light blue metal cladding. The former Gaumont Palace is a Grade II Listed building."