Oxford, like Bath, lacks a purpose-built concert hall for anything larger than chamber concerts, using the Town Hall, Sheldonian Theatre and churches and chapels. This is due to change as St. Edward’s School is planning to open a concert hall seating 1,000 in 2016. The hall will be available to the wider Oxford community as well as being used by the school. There’s a news item from last year here; my information is more recent.
Now there’s an idea! Bath missed a trick when the recent Southgate development didn’t include any venues, and in the past there have been proposals to build one in Victoria Park (in the 19th century), south of the Abbey (proposed during the First World War), and near the railway station (the 1945 plan). The Forum seats 2000 but is far from ideal for concerts, largely because of the distance between performers and audience (it was designed as a cinema). The Abbey seats several hundred (plans are afoot to increase this by moving tombs etc.) but is not wide enough to accommodate a full-size orchestra comfortably. The Guildhall and Assembly rooms are chamber-music size. But there are five independent schools in the city which are frequently embarking on large capital projects to renew and upgrade their facilities. Could one of them do what St. Edward’s is planning to do and provide Bath with the concert facilities that people have been asking for for decades?