Bath Workhouse Burial Ground: Walking the Names

1

•

Walking piece details

Echoes sound experience
Download on wifi from https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/frZzWQxkxyJXa7VZ
walk into the field….

As you walk in this space, listen…..
Below your feet are the bodies of more than 3000 people who died of poverty in the Bath Union Workhouse between 1858 and 1899.
Listen to layered readings from the Burial Register made during the virus lockdown, poetry from John Payne and more.
Let it go quiet, feel the soil speak, move to trigger the next Echo. Use the play and pause button to renew Echoes.
Glitches disturb the green forgetting perhaps to release names of the dead and thoughts of now.

Here in this field, a rich city in a rich country at the centre of the richest Empire dumped the bodies of its poor.

The dead were officially and punitively denied the dignity of a ‘decent’ funeral, bodies were taken in a tunnel under the road and buried behind high stone walls. The authorities were consoled that at least they were buried in consecrated ground.

The ground is still consecrated.
Bath and NE Somerset Council own and manage the site.
Pay your respects, acknowledge the ancestors by adding to the ‘poor’ memorial in the centre with a name flag or flowers or a small stone.