Details
CHURCH STREET Widcombe
(West side)
Widcombe Lodge
11/08/72
GV II
Detached house. Early C19, possibly incorporating earlier work, and with later modifications.
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roof.
PLAN: Villa with low-pitched hipped roof to deep box eaves, and two entries directly from Church Street, garden front has half-octagonal return wing and at north-west end canted bay.
EXTERIOR: Two storeys, various sashes, to Church Street central sash above original four-panel door with transom light and in broad channelled pilasters, with keystone and moulded cornice hood. To each side broad external eaves stack on triple brackets at first floor. Plinth, bottom four courses of ashlar walling vermiculated, broad double platband, at hood and sill heights, rusticated quoins. Right return has four-pane sashes to full height bay with hipped roof, with similar quoins and bands, and stack to plain set back section. To left further door, set into boundary wall, and connected to house by short passageway, with small interior courtyard. C19 three-panelled door has pediment hood, under bronze plaque. Left return, at obtuse angle to street, has lean-to addition to main wall, and hipped end to single storey extension, with twelve-pane sash. Garden front has three eight-pane sashes at each level in broad canted projection, then sash above tripartite sash to balustrade in projecting element, linked, right, to long single storey wing, with two twelve-pane sashes.
INTERIOR: Not inspected.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: On street front, to right, rubble boundary wall flush with villa's rear wall and approx 2m high, with large stepped-up section, carried across site to abut adjacent property. To left similar wall, containing second doorway, swept down, continued full width to pair of plank doors.
HISTORY: Bronze Bath plaque to Henry and Sarah Fielding (17-7-1754 and 1710-1768), who lived here c.1739-1757: plaque unveiled by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1906. This pre-supposes an earlier house on site, but externally this is not evident. Some sources identify this house as Yew Cottage, the former vicarage and the oldest house in the area; the house was substantially enlarged and renamed in the late C19.
SOURCES: (Maurice Scott, Discovering Widcombe and Lyncombe, Bath (2nd ed. 1993), 13-14].
Listing NGR: ST7591863936