Winter Sports
Bath Rugby Club are one of the oldest and most successful clubs in the UK. They play at the Recreation Ground, also known as The Rec. The stadium is in the centre of the city, next to the River Avon and, for enthusiastic new owner, Bruce Craig, there’s the rub; can an ambitious club operate from the middle of a city designated a World Heritage site?
Laurence Gale MSc reports
Bath Rugby Club
All peace and tranquility! B
ruce Craig’s plan is for Bath Rugby Club to have a new stadium befitting an Aviva Premiership side. Whether that is on the current site or ‘out of
town’ is, as yet, unclear. As recently as the 2009-10 season, the ground capacity was increased to 11,700, so it would seem logical, to this outsider at least, to develop the Rec. Certainly, in financially difficult times, that route would have less impact on the club and, of equal importance, the shops, hotels, pubs and historic sites of this beautiful city, where travelling fans tend to ‘make a weekend’ of it. An out of town venue may seriously impact the city’s income from its rugby club.
The city and the rugby club have been closely linked ever since 1894, when a 50 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013
lease was granted by Captain GW Forester to the Directors of The Bath and County Recreation Ground Company Limited. This lease allowed work to be carried out on the land which would make it “suitable for cricket matches, lawn tennis and archery tournaments, football matches and all other outdoor sports”.
The first rugby match was played on
the ground in that same year. Three years later, the ground hosted its maiden first-class cricket match, with Somerset County Cricket Club hosting the Gentlemen of Philadelphia as part of the Bath Cricket Festival. Somerset CCC still play one match a year at the Rec, although the weather put paid to this year’s fixture. Working alongside Bruce, himself a
former England Students rugby player, is the club’s Chief Executive Officer, Nick Blofeld, who was previously head of Epsom Racecourse. Between them, they have the drive and experience to achieve their goals. The first of these has almost been realised with the near completion of a brand new headquarters for the club at Farleigh House, which lies midway between Bath and Trowbridge in Wiltshire, but still within the Somerset border. Farleigh House has a rich and
interesting history. The current main house was completed in around 1820 for John Houlton, a wealthy Trowbridge clothier. Over the years, the house has served as a place of residence, a school and college and, more latterly, a place of work. Its most recent owners, global
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