Bath Rugby at the Rec

The Rec was left in perpetuity to the people of Bath as a Recreation Ground in 1956.

Long ago it was leased to the Bath Rugby Club, then an amateur club.

Over the years, the Club has gone professional and played well. The numbers of spectators have grown and match days contribute to the footfall in Bath city centre.

To maintain the fiction that the ground is not exclusively reserved for Bath Rugby, one side of the ground is equipped with a 'temporary' stand.

Here we see it being rebuilt in time for the start of the new season. Of course, as the season extends, the time when the part of the Rec closest to the river and one of the finest views of and viewpoints in Bath has extended.

That's not the most important point of course; the idea that the Rugby ground shares that part of the Rec is a fiction.

Yes, there is a single entrance to the Rec from the river, but the rest of the river frontage is closed off by a permanent, and from the back, very ugly stand.

Yes, you can walk on the Rugby Pitch but you don't see people using it to play games, walk, picnic or in any other fashion use it for recreation.

That's because the three permanent stands form a U-shape, with no exits from the pitch at the bottom of the U. You have to walk past the pitch to walk back onto it. And once you do, you have to walk away from the river to return to it.

That's not the full story. You have to have a very strong personality to overcome the sense that it is in fact you who is trespassing if you use the pitch area. You are surrounded by stands. The psychology works to make you feel it's you who has no right to be there.

Now, Bath Rugby want to build a larger permanent stadium on the Rec. Should they have the right to monopolise an area of 'green lung' in the very centre of Bath?

Once they do, it's essentially denied to the other citizens of Bath forever.