Royal Crescent | |
---|---|
Location | Bath, Somerset, England |
Coordinates | 51°23′13″N2°22′06″W / 51.38694°N 2.36833°W |
Built | 1767–1774 |
Current use | Private residences |
Architect | John Wood, the Younger |
Architectural style(s) | Georgian |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
Official name | Nos. 1–30, Royal Crescent |
Designated | 12 June 1950 [1] |
Reference no. | 1394736 |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Five lamp columns |
Designated | 15 October 2010 [2] |
Reference no. | 1394739 |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | 1A, Royal Crescent |
Designated | 5 August 1975 [3] |
Reference no. | 1394740 |
The Royal Crescent is a row of 30 terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent in the city of Bath, England. Designed by the architect John Wood, the Younger, and built between 1767 and 1774, it is among the greatest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom and is a Grade I listed building. Although some changes have been made to the various interiors over the years, the Georgian stone facade remains much as it was when first built.
The 500-foot-long (150 m) crescent has 114 Ionic columns on the first floor with an entablature in a Palladian style above. It was the first crescent of terraced houses to be built and an example of " rus in urbe " (the country in the city) with its views over the parkland opposite.
Many notable people have either lived or stayed in the Royal Crescent since it was built over 240 years ago, and some are commemorated on special plaques attached to the relevant buildings. Of the crescent's 30 townhouses, 10 are still full-size townhouses; 18 have been split into flats of various sizes; One is the No. 1 Royal Crescent museum, and The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa, at the centre of the crescent, is made up of No. 16 and No.15.
The street that is known today as "the Royal Crescent" was originally named "The Crescent." It is claimed that the adjective "Royal" was added at the end of the 18th century after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany had stayed there. [4] [5] He initially rented number one and later bought number 16. [6] The Royal Crescent is close to Victoria Park and linked via Brock Street to The Circus which had been designed by John Wood, the Elder. [7]
The land on which the Royal Crescent stands was bought from Sir Benet Garrard of the Garrard baronets, who were the landlords, in December 1766. [8] Between 1767 and 1775 John Wood designed the great curved facade with Ionic columns on a rusticated ground floor. [9] Each original purchaser bought a length of the façade, and then employed their own architect to build a house behind the facade to their own specifications; hence what can appear to be two houses is occasionally just one. This system of town planning is betrayed at the rear and can be seen from the road behind the Crescent: while the front is uniform and symmetrical, the rear is a mixture of differing roof heights, juxtapositions and fenestration. This architecture, described as "Queen Anne fronts and Mary-Anne backs", occurs repeatedly in Bath. [10] It was the first crescent of terraced houses to be built and an example of "rus in urbe" (the country in the city) with its views over the parkland opposite. [1] [11] [12]
In front of the Royal Crescent is a ha-ha, a ditch on which the inner side is vertical and faced with stone, with the outer face sloped and turfed, making an effective but invisible partition between the lower and upper lawns. The ha-ha is designed so as not to interrupt the view from Royal Victoria Park, and to be invisible until seen from close by. It is not known whether it was contemporary with the building of the Royal Crescent, however it is known that when it was first created it was deeper than it is at present. [13] The railings between the crescent and the lawn were included in the Heritage at Risk Register produced by English Heritage but have been restored and removed from the register. [14]
In 2003, the archaeological television programme Time Team dug the Royal Crescent in search of a Roman cemetery and the Fosse Way. The remains of a Roman wall were found behind the crescent and evidence of possible Iron and Bronze Age settlement on the lawn in front. [15]
In the late 19th century five cast iron lamp columns with decorative scrollwork were added. [2] In 1921, architect Robert Tor Russell used the Crescent as a source of inspiration to design the central business district of Connaught Place, New Delhi, India. [16] [17]
During the Bath Blitz of World War II, known as the Baedecker Raids or Baedeker Blitz, some bomb damage occurred, the most serious being the gutting of numbers 2 and 17 by incendiaries. [18] After World War II, during a period of redevelopment which is described as the Sack of Bath, the City Council considered plans that would have seen the Crescent transformed into Council offices. These were unsuccessful. [19]
During the 20th century many of the houses which had formerly been the residences of single families with maids or other staff were divided into flats and offices. However, the tradition of distinguished gentlefolk retiring to the crescent continued. The whole crescent was designated as a Grade I listed building in 1950. [20] Number 16 became a guest house in 1950. In 1971 it was combined with number 15 to become the Royal Crescent Hotel occupying the central properties of the Crescent, which were renovated and additional rooms in pavilions and coach houses within the gardens included in the accommodation. [21] [22] It was sold in 1978 to John Tham, the chairman of the London Sloane Club, and restored. [23] It was later purchased by Von Essen Hotels, which became insolvent in 2011. In September 2011 it was expected that London & Regional Properties would purchase the hotel, [24] but negotiations ended in January 2012 without a deal. [25] On 2 April 2012, investment company the Topland Group announced that it had purchased the Royal Crescent Hotel. [26]
In the 1970s the resident of No 22, Miss Amabel Wellesley-Colley, painted her front door yellow instead of the traditional white. Bath City Council issued a notice insisting it should be repainted. A court case ensued which resulted in the Secretary of State for the Environment declaring that the door could remain yellow. Other proposals for alteration and development including floodlighting and a swimming pool have been defeated. [27]
The first resident of Number 1 was Thomas Brock, Town Clerk of Chester, for whom Brock Street was named. [28] His sister Elizabeth had married the architect of the Crescent, John Wood, the Younger. Brock's first tenant at No. 1 was Henry Sandford, a retired Irish MP who rented the house from 1776 until his death in Bath in 1796. Sandford was described as a 'gentleman of the most benevolent disposition'. William Wilberforce stayed at Number 2 in 1798. [1] Christopher Anstey, a well-known writer of the time, was resident in number 4 from 1770 until 1805, although the plaque to him is placed on number 5. [29] Jean Baptiste, Vicomte du Barre took over number 8 in 1778 and hosted parties and gambling. He died in a duel on Claverton Down and is buried in the churchyard at the Church of St Nicholas in Bathampton. [30] From 1768 to 1774 number 9 was home to Philip Thicknesse, a soldier of fortune. [31] Number 11 was home to the family of Thomas Linley, a singing-master and conductor of the concerts from 1771. His eldest daughter Elizabeth Ann Linley, a singer in her own right, eloped with the playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan. [32] The centre house of the crescent (#16) was used as a residence and to host blue stocking events by Elizabeth Montagu. [33]
In the nineteenth century the popularity of the Crescent and 'taking the waters' at the Roman Baths diminished somewhat. Amongst the residents of Royal Crescent during this time were the electoral reformer Francis Burdett who lived at number 16 from 1814 to 1822 and his daughter Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts. [34] The retired Admiral William Hargood lived at number 9 from 1834 until 1839 and in 1866 the same house was home to Edward Bulwer-Lytton. [35] The jurist and explorer Thomas Falconer briefly lived at number 18 before his death in 1882. A few years later the house next door at number 17 became home to Isaac Pitman who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, now known as Pitman shorthand. [6] [36] English professor George Saintsbury took up residence at number 1A in 1916. [37]
The houses and flats in the Crescent are a mixture of tenures. After World War II when there was a shortage of housing and the city council bought up older properties, including some in Royal Crescent, as public housing to rent out. [38] The Housing Act 1985 changed the succession of Council Houses and facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations. [39] Several were subsequently sold into private ownership, [40] however one remains in council ownership. [41]
No. 1 Royal Crescent is a historic house museum, owned and maintained by the Bath Preservation Trust through its membership to illustrate how wealthy owners of the late 18th century might have furnished and occupied such a house. [42] It was purchased in 1967 by Major Bernard Cayzer, a member of the family that made its fortune through the Clan shipping line. He donated it to the Trust with an amount of money for its restoration and furnishing. [43] The restoration was led by Philip Jebb. [44] The Bath Preservation Trust was working during 2012–13 to re-unite Number One with its original servants' wing at Number 1A Royal Crescent, which has been in use as a separate dwelling for many years. No. 1 serves as the Trust's headquarters. [45] Number 15 and 16 are still used as a hotel. [46]
Bath and North East Somerset council made an order banning coaches and buses from the crescent, after many years of complaints by residents that the tours given to tourists were disruptive, particularly because of the amplified commentary given by tour guides on open top buses. [47] [48] [49]
The crescent is 500 feet (150 m) long and each building is almost 50 feet (15 m) high, including small rooms with dormer windows in the attic. [1] [50] The ground floor is plain emphasising the columns and windows of the first floor. The 114 columns are 30 inches (76 cm) in diameter reaching 47 feet (14.3 m), each with an entablature 5 feet (1.5 m) deep in a Palladian style. [51] [20] The central house (now the Royal Crescent Hotel) boasts two sets of coupled columns with a single window between them which is the middle of the crescent. [20] [52] [1]
They are built of Bath stone. They have slate roofs but were originally stone tiled. [1] The appearance of each house is very similar with only minor variations between them, for example, some have small balconettes on the first floor. Many of the windows have been restored to their original style with glazing bars rather than the horned plate glass sash windows which had been installed in the 19th or early 20th centuries. [1] Some of the window sills had also been lowered. This has been reversed at Number 1 but policy has since changed with a decision to keep the alterations which were made in the 19th century. [53] In front of the houses are cast iron railings which are mirrored by those on the opposite side of the road at the top of Victoria Park. The road is surfaced with pennant stone laid when the crescent was constructed. [1]
In 1965, the black comedy The Wrong Box (1966) used the Crescent extensively as a location, standing in for London.
The 1965 film Catch Us If You Can had a sequence filmed outside the Crescent, and in one of its houses. [54]
In 2007, a TV edition of Jane Austen's Persuasion included many scenes shot at the Crescent, where the Elliot family was supposedly living while in Bath. [55]
The Crescent featured in the 2008 film The Duchess , starring Keira Knightley. [56]
The fictional heroine of 2008 BBC1 archaeology thriller Bonekickers was depicted as living in the Crescent. [57]
In 2014, the hotel in the Crescent was a location for BBC1 series Our Girl . [58]
In 2020, the Crescent was first used in the Netflix series Bridgerton and continued to be used in later seasons. [59]
The ITV television series McDonald & Dodds is set in Bath and makes frequent use of the Crescent as interstitial scenery as well as a shooting location.
Bath is a city in the ceremonial county of Somerset in England, known for and named after its Roman-built baths. At the 2021 Census, the population was 94,092. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, 97 miles (156 km) west of London and 11 miles (18 km) southeast of Bristol. The city became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and was later added to the transnational World Heritage Site known as the "Great Spa Towns of Europe" in 2021. Bath is also the largest city and settlement in Somerset.
Belgravia is a district in Central London, covering parts of the areas of the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
The Circus is a historic ring of large townhouses in the city of Bath, Somerset, England, forming a circle with three entrances. Designed by architect John Wood, the Elder, it was built between 1754 and 1768, and is regarded as a pre-eminent example of Georgian architecture. "Circus" means a ring, oval or circle in Latin. The construction has been designated as a Grade I listed building.
Prior Park is a Neo-Palladian house that was designed by John Wood, the Elder, and built in the 1730s and 1740s for Ralph Allen on a hill overlooking Bath, Somerset, England. It has been designated as a Grade I listed building.
John Wood, the Elder was an English architect, working mainly in Bath.
Royal Victoria Park is a public park in Bath, England. It was opened in 1830 by the 11-year-old Princess Victoria, seven years before her ascension to the throne, and was the first park to carry her name. It was privately run as part of the Victorian public park movement until 1921, when it was taken over by the Bath Corporation.
The Bath Assembly Rooms, designed by John Wood the Younger in 1769, are a set of assembly rooms located in the heart of the World Heritage City of Bath in England which are now open to the public as a visitor attraction. They are designated as a Grade I listed building.
Beckford's Tower, originally known as Lansdown Tower, is an architectural folly built in neo-classical style on Lansdown Hill, just outside Bath, Somerset, England. The tower and its attached railings are designated as a Grade I listed building. Along with the adjoining Lansdown Cemetery it is Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England.
The Theatre Royal in Bath, England, was built in 1805. A Grade II* listed building, it has been described by the Theatres Trust as "One of the most important surviving examples of Georgian theatre architecture". It has a capacity for an audience of around 900.
John Pinch was an architect working mainly in the city of Bath, England. He was surveyor to the Pulteney and Darlington estate and responsible for many of the later Georgian buildings in Bath, especially in Bathwick.
Charles James Dugdale, 2nd Baron Crathorne,, was Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire from 1999 until 2014. He is also one of the ninety hereditary peers elected to remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, sitting as a Conservative. In 1977, he succeeded to his father's title.
The Bath Preservation Trust is a charity that is based in Bath, Somerset, England, which exists to safeguard for the public benefit the historic character and amenities of the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its environs. BPT is independent, funded by public membership, grants, donations and income from four museums that it operates in Bath: No. 1 Royal Crescent, the Museum of Bath Architecture, Beckford's Tower, and the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.
Queen Square is a square of Georgian houses in the city of Bath, England. Queen Square is the first element in "the most important architectural sequence in Bath", which includes the Circus and the Royal Crescent. All of the buildings which make up the square are Grade I listed.
The buildings and architecture of Bath, a city in Somerset in the south west of England, reveal significant examples of the architecture of England, from the Roman Baths, to the present day. The city became a World Heritage Site in 1987, largely because of its architectural history and the way in which the city landscape draws together public and private buildings and spaces. The many examples of Palladian architecture are purposefully integrated with the urban spaces to provide "picturesque aestheticism". In 2021, the city was added to a second World Heritage Site, a group of historic spa towns across Europe known as the "Great Spas of Europe". Bath is the only entire city in Britain to achieve World Heritage status, and is a popular tourist destination.
The Old Orchard Street Theatre in Bath, Somerset, England was built as a provincial theatre before becoming a Roman Catholic Church and since 1865 has been a Masonic Hall. It is a Grade II listed building.
Buxton Crescent is a Grade-I-listed building in the town of Buxton, Derbyshire, England. It owes much to the Royal Crescent in Bath, but has been described by the Royal Institution of British Architects as "more richly decorated and altogether more complex". It was designed by the architect John Carr of York, and built for the 5th Duke of Devonshire between 1780 and 1789. In 2020, following a multi-year restoration and redevelopment project supported by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Derbyshire County Council, The Crescent was reopened as a 5-star spa hotel.
Sydney Gardens is a public open space at the end of Great Pulteney Street in Bath, Somerset, England. The gardens are the only remaining eighteenth-century pleasure gardens in the country. They are Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England.
Adelaide Crescent is a mid-19th-century residential development in Hove, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. Conceived as an ambitious attempt to rival the large, high-class Kemp Town estate east of Brighton, the crescent was not built to its original plan because time and money were insufficient. Nevertheless, together with its northerly neighbour Palmeira Square, it forms one of Hove's most important architectural set-pieces. Building work started in 1830 to the design of Decimus Burton. The adjacent land was originally occupied by "the world's largest conservatory", the Anthaeum; its collapse stopped construction of the crescent, which did not resume until the 1850s. The original design was modified and the crescent was eventually finished in the mid-1860s. Together with the Kemp Town and Brunswick Town estates, the crescent is one of the foremost pre-Victorian residential developments in the Brighton area: it has been claimed that "outside Bath, [they] have no superior in England". The buildings in the main part of Adelaide Crescent are Grade II* listed. Some of the associated buildings at the sea-facing south end are listed at the lower Grade II.
No. 1 Royal Crescent is the first building at the eastern end of the Royal Crescent in Bath, Somerset, and is of national architectural and historic importance. It is currently the headquarters of the conservation charity, the Bath Preservation Trust, and also operates as a public "historic house" museum displaying authentic room sets, furniture, pictures and other items illustrating Georgian domestic life both 'above stairs' and 'below stairs'. The house was the subject of a major renovation project during 2012 and 2013 which reunited No. 1 with its original service wing at No. 1A, from which it had been separated during the 20th century.