Letter: Tourist trap

Sir: Bath was built to accommodate visitors ('Defenders of Bath 'jewel' aim to stop tour buses', 17 January). With Scarborough, Weymouth and, slightly later, Brighton, it was one of the first towns (since Roman times) to exist primarily to attract and accommodate people who came there because of the place's own attractions, and not for economic or personal reasons.

It is fair enough to say that visitors are intrusive in Oxford or Cambridge colleges, and perhaps in cathedral closes (although many cathedrals were built partly to impress pilgrims), but to object to tourists coming to Bath is totally illogical. If so many people had not visited it in Georgian times it would now be a smaller and far less magnificent town.

Yours faithfully,

DAVID LLOYD

Harlow,

Essex

18 January