The Bath Fringe is a festival of all the arts, with few rules as to what should be in or out – it’s what people want to do, and what venues in Bath want to put on. It all happens for 2 long weeks & 3 weekends (17 days or thereabouts) in early summer, in the beautiful city of Bath.
The origins of Bath Fringe go back to the sideshows which sprang up around important Temple festivals before and during the Roman Occupation, to the street fairs that surrounded the Abbey for the coronation of Edgar in 959… Well obviously we can’t trace that exactly, of course, but it’s worth remembering that Bath has been a town of arts, visitors, travelling performers, even before the Georgian era that our Heritage Industry makes so much of.
The origins of Bath Fringe go back to the sideshows which sprang up around important Temple festivals before and during the Roman Occupation, to the street fairs that surrounded the Abbey for the coronation of Edgar in 959… Well obviously we can’t trace that exactly, of course, but it’s worth remembering that Bath has been a town of arts, visitors, travelling performers, even before the Georgian era that our Heritage Industry makes so much of.
It makes more sense to trace the Fringe back to the Bath Festivals of Blues & Progressive Music of ’69 & ’70, but the connections to the current crew are a little tenuous, so let’s say the real start were the Walcot Festivals of the ’70s & ‘early 80s, mostly run by a community group called Bath Arts Workshop – the name still exists for the company that runs the Natural Theatre Company of Bath.
