Details
QUEEN SQUARE
656-1/40/1327 (South side)
Nos.5-11 (Consec) Francis Hotel (Formerly Listed as: QUEEN SQUARE (South side) Nos.5-13 (Consec) Francis Hotel)
12/06/50
GV I
Terrace houses, now hotel. Square begun 1729, completed 1736, architect John Wood the Elder. Eastern four houses rebuilt entirely in 1955 following severe bomb damage (see plaque).
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roof.
EXTERIOR: Building on south side of Square was designed by Wood as single composed unit, now subdivided, hotel taking major part, with two separate properties to right (qv Nos 12 and 13, Queen Square), in post-war reconstruction some modifications and additions were made to rear, including principal entrance, and central projecting full height wing. Three storeys, attic and basement, with twenty-one windows, bays one-three and thirteen-fifteen brought forward under pediments. All windows are plain sashes, including twelve dormers (one of these paired to central mullion), at second floor all in eared architraves, at first floor in moulded architraves with straight cornice above pulvinated frieze, and extended down through plain sill band. Ground floor windows to plain splay surround, and in basement to plain reveals without splay. In bays one, two, three, ten, eleven, twelve, sixteen, seventeen and eighteen ground floor windows in recessed arched panels, and in centre bays, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, architraves enriched with egg-and-dart. Unused part-glazed panelled doors with transom lights in bays thirteen and fifteen, flanking main entry with pair of panelled doors under transom light, and with deep projecting half-cylindrical glazed canopy on decorative cast iron beams carried on two slender cast iron columns. Bay twenty-one (or No.11) has an eight-panel fielded door in eared architrave, and with deep frieze to swept ends: over-door relief of a female mask set against a scallop shell, with flanking palm fronds. Door shares landing with entrance to No.12. Basement set in plinth, centre three-bays have rusticated ground floor, bays with recessed arches have impost band, otherwise band carried between ground floor windows, and over all modillion cornice, with egg-and-dart enrichment to centre pediment, blocking course and pediment. Left hand gable coped, and three coped party divisions, with two large stacks. Bay sixteen carries Sun Insurance plaque No.95830. Return, left, to Barton Street, in three+two bays, with pediment and step forward over three-bay section, all detail as for main front, attic level, with straight parapet over central valley to mansard roof, has central stack, and three lights, and three blind lights in lower levels, no basement being visible. At rear, end towards Barton Street appears to have been mainly rebuilt with plain sashes at four levels, plus dormers, centre has deep wing, with entrance with steps and C20 portico to left. To left of wing, some original elements in rear wall, including one of semicircular turrets with arched and twelve-pane sash windows.
INTERIOR: Not inspected, mainly post-war reconstruction.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Across main front plain railings to ashlar curb, with ends returned, and with gates to basement staircases at bays six and twenty.
HISTORY: 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. The south side of Queen Square was architecturally the least elaborate side of the square. Extensive bomb damage (in April 1942) has further qualified the row's relative importance within the square. However, as a component part of an outstanding set-piece, meticulously reconstructed in facsimile in 1955 (see inscription on front), these houses remain of great importance. John Wood the Elder lived at No.9. Francis Hotel called after Mrs Francis who ran quality boarding house at this address in early/mid C19. 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: ST7481564942
