Details
QUEEN SQUARE
656-1/30/2447 (East side)
No.3 with railings (Formerly Listed as: QUEEN SQUARE (East side) Nos 1A, 1-4 (consec) & 4A)
12/06/50
GV I
Large house in square, now offices. 1729-1734, by John Wood the Elder.
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roof.
PLAN: Grand symmetrical wide-frontage house in group of six on east side of square.
EXTERIOR: Three storeys, attic and basement, five windows, all plain sashes, three small dormers in mansard roof, above sashes in eared architraves to second floor and deep sash with architraves and straight cornice hood on pulvinated frieze to first floor. Ground floor and basement sashes in splayed surrounds. Central seven-panel door in pilasters with egg-and-dart enrichment, with lion-head stops with drops and central swag under open pediment with central raised panel with carved fruits. Drip course above basement, platband above ground floor, with modillion cornice with very shallow blocking course and parapet, continued from adjoining No.2 (qv). Each end has coped party division with deep ashlar stack.
INTERIOR: partially inspected 11th December 1986.
HISTORY: The cottage at the rear which is linked to the Wood house by passages at ground floor and basement levels is believed to be a farmhouse which ante-dates Wood¿s development. Basement: North front room: half glazed door with 1 ½inch ovolo glazing bars with ½ inch fillets and two ovolo panels below. South front room: two windows, no shutters: fireplace with beaded architrave: staircase with Doric colonnette on vase banisters. Second Floor: unmoulded panelling and original architrave fireplaces in front and back south rooms. Cottage at Rear. Ground Floor: north half: big kitchen with big fireplace (blocked)with mantelpiece over supported on cyma-and-cavetto-moulded brackets: remains of old dresser with only two shelves but six Doric column legs: six panel unmoulded door with narrow cyma reversa architrave. South room: six panel ovolo door with narrow beaded cyma architrave: pair of one-panel doors with fixed panels over to right of fireplace. C18 cavetto moulded architrave fireplace with Regency reeded mantelpiece. First Floor: north casement ruinous: flush six-panel beaded door to lobby. South room: two pairs of casements. North west room: pair of casements west and one facing north: two panel door. North east room: very low ceiling: collar trusses: pair of casements. Staircase: return flight with Doric newels and bulbous Doric colonnette-on-vase banisters.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Basement areas are enclosed in simple cast iron railings on stone curbs, returned to doorway. Houses on east side of Queen Square were earliest of the Wood development, and are relatively plain, this front has lost all original glazing bars, and first floor windows have been lowered, but there was no sill band, as in adjoining houses.
HISTORY: The houses on east side of Queen Square were the first to be built of John Wood's development. Both No.2 and No.3 were taken by Richard Child, Earl Tylney, possibly explaining why they have same carved doorcase: these doors represent a late flourishing of Baroque stone-carving. John Wood leased the site from Robert Gay from 1728 onwards, and granted underleases in 1729-1731 to a range of developers, and the houses are first recorded as occupied in the rate books in 1734. Wood originally intended to level the sloping site, but this was abandoned on the grounds of cost. Queen Square is of exceptional importance as the first large-scale instance of town planning to arrive at Bath. Wood drew on precedents in contemporary London house-building and, through the courageous and skilful pursuit of his vision, created a monumental ensemble on a fresh sloping site some distance to the west of the former city walls. Each side of the square forms a symmetrical composition, but none of the sides are alike. Queen Square forms the earliest, and lowest, element in the sequence of set-pieces by the Woods which culminates with the Royal Crescent.
SOURCES: Tim Mowl and Brian Earnshaw, 'John Wood. Architect of Obsession' (1988), 65-86; Walter Ison, 'The Georgian Buildings of Bath' (2nd ed. 1980), 115-120, 226-28.
Listing NGR: ST7485365003
