Nos. 14 and 15 and Attached Railings

Details

QUEEN SQUARE 656-1/40/1329 (West side) Nos.14 AND 15 and attached railings (Formerly Listed as: QUEEN SQUARE (West side) No.14. No.15. Nos 16-18 (consec) (Reference Library). Nos 18A, 19 & 20) 12/06/50

GV I

Two houses (originally three) in symmetrical pedimented front, with return to Chapel Row, now offices. c1730. By John Wood the Elder, part of original layout to west side of Square. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roof. EXTERIOR: Palladian villa composition with hipped mansard, central three-bays brought forward under pediment, rear has some additions, including deep wing to No.15. Three storeys, attic and basement, two+three+two windows, all sashes. No.14 all are plain, in two+one bay windows. No.15 has all twelve-pane, in two+two bay windows. Each has small dormer, second floor windows are in moulded architraves, and first floor have architraves and straight cornice hoods, in first three-bays sashes in splayed surrounds and have been extended and break through sill band, forms stop to rusticated ground floor. Centre three bays have alternate triangular and segmental pediments on Ionic pilasters. Ground floor openings have Gibbsian surrounds, heavy triple keystones, alternate triangular and segmental open pediments, but centre twelve-pane sash set to sunk arched panel with deep stepped voussoirs, as in bays each side with doorways, with single panelled door to No.14 and double to No.15. Basement has two:one:two sashes. Modillion cornice, blocking course and parapet, centre with three fine urns on pedestals. Deep ashlar stack between bays three and four, and to right. Return, to Chapel Row, also has projecting centre with pediment, with detail as front. One small dormer, above blind lights at second and first floors, and twelve-pane at ground floor, each side, centre has small plain sash flanked by blind lights at second floor, above large sixteen-pane. Pediment crowned by stack, with further deep stack rear left. Rear has various sashes and dormers, and projecting full height wings have cornice to blocking course and parapet. INTERIORS: Both in office use. No.14 with wooden staircase at rear of house; Regency joinery and plasterwork evident at ground floor level. No. 14: inspected 17th October 1980. HISTORY: Thought to have been built as the parsonage for Wood¿s chapel to its south. Basement: Front room: smaller fireplace with elaborate adjustable barred grate, presumably for cooking. Back room: long elliptically-vaulted cellar with two huge fireplaces (altered). The vault was built to support a billiard table over. Ground Floor: Staircase: original cut string steps with double C-scrolled Baroque tread ends with Doric colonnette on vase banisters: bow to half landing with Venetian window and semi-dome with large central plaster shell. Elaborate original key pattern ornament to soffits of beams over half-landings. Back south room: early C19 cornice and reeded architrave: original eight-raised and fielded panel doors with reeded architraves with lions¿ heads on corner blocks: one window with original panelled shutters. First Floor: Front room subdivided: original shutters, good quality Regency detailing, nondescript modern fireplace. Back south room: original eight-panel door to staircase landing: one window with raised and fielded panel shutters and reeded Regency architraves: early Victorian marble fireplace. Back south extension: reeded cornice: original window with shutters folded parallel to wall: plain Regency fireplace with reeded architrave with corner blocks with leaf motifs. Second Floor: Back south room: Regency cornice: original six-raised and fielded panel door with wide cyma-moulded architrave: late C18 fireplace with leaf decoration. Third Floor: original attic staircase. No.15 possesses one of the very best staircase compartments of C18 Bath, with plasterwork by Francini Brothers, with panels depicting the flaying of Marsyas, St Cecelia etc, set within elaborately moulded frames beneath a richly modelled putti and acanthus leaf frieze. The elaborate staircase (illus. In Green, PL.XXXVIII), located in the left front room, was sold to America in c.1930, but has been reinstated in replica by the joiner Donal Channer in c1985: it comprises an open-string wooden staircase with turned balusters and Corinthian columnar newels. The infilling of 1830 destroyed the entrance to the former No.16, 'but its rooms and staircase still survive within No.15' (Mowl & Earnshaw 78). No. 15: HISTORY: Ison says that the house was built by Wood for his own occupation: he gives a plan on page 108 and a photograph of the plasterwork in plate 119b. (See Mowbray Green, plate XXXVIII for a photograph of the original staircase, XXXIX for the plasterwork. And XL for a fireplace.) The magnificent oak and mahogany inlaid main staircase was incorporated in Norcott Hill House, Berkhamstead when it was built in the 1920s but was accurately copied for Bath City Council by Donal Channer in the 1980s and the copy restored to the house. Ison describes the interior of its staircase hall and its outstanding plasterwork on page 188 (see his plate 119b). The staircase only climbs to the first floor: it has carved Baroque tread ends with volutes, fluted Corinthian newels and three banisters to a step, Doric colonnettes alternately vertically and spirally fluted on vases: the heavy moulded ramped handrail ends in a large spiral curve at ground floor level. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Front basement areas enclosed by cast iron railings on stone curb, returned to each of doorways and at ends. HISTORY: This house corresponds with Nos 18A and 19 Queen Square (qv), both pairs forming the fronts of projecting wings which flanked a recessed mansion in the centre of the composition, set back behind a courtyard. This recessed section was done away with in 1830, when the present Institution was constructed. The elevations facing into the courtyard were destroyed, and the entrance arrangements have consequently undergone some changes. No.14 was first listed on 14th July 1955. John Wood is thought to have occupied No.15 at some point (Ison), but recent scholarship points to No.9 being his residence. 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: ST7474264959

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