Astoft

 

Bath - the Baths area 
18th century

Click photos to enlarge
Notes in italics from North Somerset and Bristol by Nikolaus Pevsner  (1958)
Yale University Press, New Haven and London



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Pump Room, Abbey Churchyard. (The block to the right of the colonnade).1789-99 by Baldwin, completed after Baldwin's dismissal by Palmer.  Seven bays with a three-bay portico of giant Corinthian columns rising from the ground and carrying a pediment which remains below the main intermittently balustraded parapet. Large arched upper windows in the angle bays. ... The colonnade, a nine-bay composition of unfluted Ionic columns, with a three-bay pediment. It screens Stall Street from the Abbey Churchyard. ... The side elevation of the Pump Room is particularly successful. Three bays only, with a ground floor completely windowless, but made interesting by vermiculated rustication and four strongly modelled paterae. Above three slender pedimented niches between four pairs of coupled unfluted Corinthian columns. The weak S end of the King's Bath colonnade is by C.E. Davis 1889.


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Bath Street leads from the King's Bath to the Cross Bath. Between the two Bath Street runs with colonnades of unfluted Ionic columns on both sides. They open into a semicircle to embrace the Cross Bath ... The scheme was designed by Baldwin, and building started in 1791. The facades above the colonnades are simple, but the tripartite pedimented windows are a clear sign of late C18 date.
Cross Bath. Part of the Bath Street design. ... Baldwin's Cross Bath of c.1784 (altered by Palmer 1798) has remarkably Baroque facades, that to Bath Street with a central double curve, that to the N with straight side parts cambered back towards the middle where a colonnaded segmental  projection forms the main accent. The interior was originally open to the sky. Corinthian columns and charming Adamish detail.
Behind the Cross Bath is the rear facade of John Wood House, 1727, one of John Wood the Elder's earliest commissions. Restored in 1991 without the lime render previously used to resemble ashlar. Archway with Roman Doric columns and pediment.



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St Michael Within. Behind the Cross Bath. This is the chapel of St John's Hospital. Rebuilt in 1723 by William Killigrew. Two-storeyed windows, segment-headed and circular. Altered in the C19 and provided with deplorable Venetian tracery.
Hot Baths (close to Cross Bath, see picture). One-storeyed, Portico with two pairs of Tuscan columns with pediment. ... The younger Wood built the Bath in 1776-8. It is his only civic building.


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