Details
BATH STREET
(North side)
Nos. 9-16 (consec)
(Formerly Listed as: BATH STREET
(North side) Nos. 9-16 (consec)
(part of Royal Baths Treatment Centre))
12/06/50
GV I
Formal terrace of eight houses with shops, ending to concave crescents, forming the northern half of symmetrical street layout, (see also No. 37 Stall Street) 1791. Part of the Bath Improvement Scheme of 1789 by Thomas Baldwin. Considerable renovation and internal reconstruction after World War II, the entire western end of the block reconstructed internally to form Nos. 9-16, known as The Colonnades, after demolition of Royal Baths in 1989. The basement, ground and first floor levels reconstructed internally again in 1997.
MATERIALS: Fine ashlar, steep mansard slate roofs.
PLAN: Street in the form of double colonnade, with shops set back at ground floor, carrying houses above, at ends facades return as shallow concave crescents.
EXTERIOR: Three storeys, attic and basement, all windows twelve pane sashes with fine bars. Principal frontage in twenty one bays, ten dormers with paired sash, one triple, and one single, all replacements. Sashes are in plain reveals, on guilloche sill band at second floor, and immediately above colonnade entablature to first floor, central bay to each group of three has closed pediment on frieze with swags on deep consoles to pilasters. Unfluted Ionic columns carry plain frieze with cornice and blocking course, and rise from stone flag pavement. Set back shopfronts standardised with small-pane display windows with pilasters to scroll heads, doors with deep transom lights. Across whole frontage lintel with frieze, cornice, blocking course and parapet, and five ashlar stacks. West end quadrant identical in detail, in five bays with three pedimented windows, and with smaller display windows to colonnade, and at east end return to Stall Street similar, but in four bays, with three dormers, and bay two at first floor having pediment on paired pilasters with consoles, C20 shop front to colonnade (for full description of this section see No.37 Stall Street. Straight and narrow single bay links to adjoining building to right.
INTERIORS: Have been substantially altered, especially the ground floor and basement areas.
HISTORY: Bath Street was designed by Baldwin and built under the provisions of the 1789 Bath Improvement Act. The first stone was laid on 31 March 1791. The result, linking the Cross Bath and the King¿s Bath, was an exemplary piece of neoclassical town improvement showing the influence of the Adams. The colonnades were intended to shelter pedestrians, and showed the influence of thoroughly up-to-date thinking, influenced by French examples, of planned shopping developments. The two parts of Bath Street form what Pevsner (op cit) refers to as the ".... finest piece of formal planning in Bath...."; the street axis, running east and west, has to the east the King's Baths (qv) and to the west the Cross Bath (qv). The replacement of all glazing bars has restored to the ensemble its original dignity.
SOURCES: Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bath (Second Edition, 1980), 170-71; Thom Gorst, Bath. An Architectural Guide (1997), 104.
Listing NGR: ST7498464723
