Eagle House including balustrade two yards in front of south elevation

Details

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 1/06/2018

ST 7768
6/114

BATHEASTON C.P.
NORTHEND (West side)
No. 71 (Eagle House) including balustrade two yards in front of south elevation

1.2.56

GV
II*
House, now flats. Late C17/early C18; remodelled 1724 (date on inner wall, formerly west gable) and 1729 by John Wood, the Elder, for himself; extended 1906-1908 by Mowbray Green of Bath, for Colonel Linley Blathwayt

Coursed rubble with ashlar quoins and dressings (top two courses below eaves are ashlar, denoting the raising of the roof); half-hipped slate roof; ashlar stacks; moulded cornice. Two storeys, basement and attics in pedimented dormers.

South (garden) elevation: five bays, plus two in 1906-1908 extension to left. Twenty four-pane glazing bar sash windows in architraves, eighteen panes to 1906-1908 windows. Continuous moulded string course above ground floor. Central feature of composition surely by Wood, is Venetian; window on first floor with two outer blocked lights and central triple keystone which rises to join the cornice. Below is Ionic doorcase with heavily banded columns, pediment. Panelled door. Pierced balustrade to terrace, two metres in front of south elevation.

East elevation: three bays. Centre bay, by Wood, is slightly advanced; quoins; blocked window on ground floor; shell headed niche containing urn on first floor with central triple keystone which rises to form base of pediment; cartouche in tympanum of pediment bears date 1729; coarsely cut eagle with spread wings surmounts pediment. Outer bays; two twenty four-pane glazing bar sash windows in architraves. Continuous string course across three bays.

Interior: Remains of early C18 staircase; turned and twisted balusters. Panelled plasterwork at top of stairs with shell-headed niches. Early-mid C18 fireplace in ground floor room (Flat 1); Ionic pilasters, overmantel and decorative surround.

Historically a very important house. An important provincial baroque building. John Wood the Elder's first known house and work in the Bath area.

Eagle House was the home of Colonel Linley Blathwayt, his wife Emily and their daughter Mary. All were strong supporters of women’s suffrage. Mary and her mother joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage society formed in Manchester in 1903, and became close to Annie Kenney, the WSPU’s Bristol organiser. Kenney became a regular visitor to Eagle House where she would retreat when political campaigning had exhausted her. Eagle House became a popular site for suffragettes who would come to enjoy the Blathwayt’s hospitality and the use of the Linley’s car. Some used it as a convenient base for starting propaganda work in the south west, whereas others came to recover their health after periods in prison. Leading suffragettes including Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, Elsie Howey, Charlotte Despard, Constance Lytton, Charlotte Marsh and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence all spent time at Eagle House, and in the evenings there was often singing and games. Visitors were encouraged to plant trees in part of the grounds that the family called ‘Annie’s Arboretum’ in honour of hunger-striking suffragettes. At least 47 were planted, and Blathwayt, a keen amateur photographer, recorded each. Emily Blathwayt resigned from the WSPU in 1909, dismayed by the Union’s escalating violence. She continued to welcome militant women to Eagle House, although visits slowed when Annie Kenney moved back to work in London in 1912. Mary resigned from the Union in 1913, possibly due to a local suffragette arson attack. The arboretum was demolished in the late 1960s but one tree, an Austrian pine planted by Wimbledon suffragette Rose Larmatine Yates, survives.

This list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

Listing NGR: ST7795068347

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

32156

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: North Somerset and Bristol, (1958)
Dobbie, BMW, A Nest of Suffragettes in Somerset, ()
Dobbie, BMW, An English Rural Community, (1969)

Other
Blathwayt Diaries, Gloucester Record Office ref D2659 24/9 and 27/14

End of official list entry

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