Ines LarchFreelance writer
Essays and reported features on baths, libraries and market halls, and who paid for them.
Why a public bath kept its glass out of reach.
Written for a county museums trust
The hall belongs to the town, the lease to a charity, and the leaking roof to neither.
Written for a regional heritage quarterly
The north light kept the reading room even from opening to closing.
Written for a library friends' society
The committee minutes, read for what the building was meant to do.
Written for a borough archive
Which ones still hold music, and who pays to keep them standing.
Written for a city parks trust
One set of municipal baths I wrote about put every window above head height. Daylight came in, and nobody could look in.1
The committee that ordered them said why in one line of its minutes. It wanted the bathers to have the light and the street to have nothing.2
That reads as modesty. I read it as a brief to the architect, and the building follows it to the letter.
Notes
Essays, features and research notes for trusts, archives and local governments, so the next committee starts from the record.
Tell me what it is for, who reads it and when it is due. I will say if I am the right writer.