A long time ago in a land far away, when I was first learned the term rustication, my professor, already an angry and unhappy man, immediately explained to his rapt audience that every year the entire class would always confuse the word and write it as rustification. He said always — and without fail, and of course, that’s what sunk me. I still fight that f to this day.

This was of course by design since he followed with a story about his friend who teaches at Harvard. I’m sure the person is more of an acquaintance since I doubt this man has any friends but apparently the Harvard architectural professor deliberately pronounced facade to his freshman audience as fakAde, and was greatly amused that the class followed his precedent into their later years in school.

Back to the images. This facade of the Pump Room faces Stall Street. This stage was designed by Thomas Baldwin but the building was taken over in 1792 and redesigned and completed by John Palmer. This particular type of rustication present on each block is termed vermiculated, expressing the appearance of a worm-ridden block. The simple inversed-beak joints between the blocks are simply termed as chamfered. Note the Ionic order here along the famed colonnade.

The street musician in the first photo performs on Stall Street when Abbey’s cloister square is occupied by another. There is some agreed upon schedule, as each act always ends five minutes to the hour and the musicians switch spots.

Click here for whole block.

Click here for a section without an added balcony but with all the restored/original sill windows (without Victorian plate glass).
On Bathwick Hill Road immediately after St. Mary the Virgin Church (and thus on the slope Bathwick Hill) lies Raby Place, designed by John Pinch the Elder between 1818-1825. The street name was originally Church Street (and remains so on my really outdated ordinance map). This series of eighteen two-bay terrace houses features Pinch’s famous design of a ramped cornice, similar to what can be found on a staircase banister and equally appropriate when one tries climbing this hill while carrying a litre of milk and some groceries. (Also see the same ramped cornice detailing on Cavendish Place, also by Pinch)

Click here to see the whole block.

On  CamdenPlace, Camden Crescent was designed by John Eveleigh between 1787-94, when the architect and speculative builders went bankrupt.

posted by JosyC

“Bath’s most unusual crescent of sixteen houses above Cavendish Crescent. Started by John Eveleigh in 1790, it was abandoned for financial reason and only resumed c 1820; the west wing has only five houses though cellars were built for two more. The central symmetrical pair, Nos. 10-11, dominate, with a big six-bay broken segmental pediment. The tympanum is carved with paterae and swags caught up by pegs, and reverse curves to the tympanum in the broken section meet to form a pedestal with a vase finial. The first floor has a central arched niche with an open pediment. The paired doors have Gibbs surrounds and icicle keystone masks and cornices on consoles that terminate in carved leaves.

“These houses were built as a semi-detached pair; they step slightly forward, and are not curved in plan like the winds. The flanking houses are simpler, three storeys, three bays; the east wind descends downhill, managing the slope with a tilted platband and cornice. The doorcases are rusticated and have cornices on consoles, some with unusual acanthus leaf keystones. Nos. 5-7 and 10-13 were gutted by incendiaries in 1942 and rebuilt for student hostels by Hugh D. Roberts, 1950-1960s.” –Michael Forsyth, Bath (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 171. Elevation from Walter Ison’s Georgian Buildings of Bath (1980).

posted by JosyC

Delia’s Grotto, Bath: [1. Elizabeth A. Linley, 2. Richard B. Sheridan, 3. The Grotto for Scandal, 4. History of Delia's Grotto 5. Design and Brief Context]
The Parade Coffee House opened in 1750 and is now Bridgewater House. (See next photo down for the view from the building looking toward Abbey Street, Pierrepont Street, and the North Parade Buildings, River Avon.)

So when we last left Elizabeth Ann Linley (1754-1792), her short engagement to the elderly Mr. Long had ended and she was now the [negative] talk of the town. Depressed, she felt the whole city trapping her and she longed to escape to France, which is when she met the penniless Dublin-born Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), who had only two years before come to Bath with his father and older brother Charles, another one of her ardent suitors. He didn’t quite sweep her off her feet, but swept her in a waiting carriage and there used his time well while he escorted her to France. The couple left the Royal Crescent, Bath, under the cover of nightfall on 18 March 1772 to pass through London before arriving in Dunkirke. Later, she would write of the journey that she had not known him well before the carriage trip but found his concern for her welfare comforting as the two traveled to France, and there were secretly married in Calais. Elizabeth’s father, Thomas, tracked them down to Lille and escorted them both back to Bath. [1]

[Right: Sheridan] Back in Bath, the Sheridan-Linley elopement was greeted with the wagging of “patrician tongues” and pleasure-seekers “gossiping their powdered heads off from mid-morning until late afternoon.” [2] The affair also angered one of Elizabeth’s former die-hard suitors, Captain Thomas Mathews, who placed an advertisement in the Bath Chronicle on the 9 April 1772 that stated “because S. [Sheridan] had run away and had made damaging insinuations against him, S. must be ‘posted’ a ‘L[iar] and treacherous s[coundrel].’” This type of public attack was unusual since these challenges were often just posted at Coffee Houses and not in the newspaper. [3]
The resulting altercation during their first duel with rapiers nearly cost Sheridan his life when the militarily-trained Capt. Matthews quickly disarmed the poet and made him beg for his life apologize. Matthews then spread the story to further humiliate Sheridan, which resulted in a second more clumsy duel, in both swords broke but the poet was seriously injured. [4]
[Left: Capt. Mathews] Responding at night in the Parade Coffee House after returning to Bath, Sheridan was probably addressing the printer of the Bath Chronicle when he wrote: “Mr. Mathews thought himself essentially injured by a young Lady to escape the snare of vice and dissimulation. He wrote several most abusive threats to Mr. S— then in France. He laboured with a cruel intensity, to vilify his character in England. He publickly posted him as a scoundrel and a Liar— Mr. S answered him from France (hurried and surprised) that he would never sleep in England ‘till he had thank’d him as he deserved.” Sheridan goes on to claim that he won the second duel and that Mathews has lied about everything. [5] Later in another letter written to Mathews’ second at the later duel, Sheridan rhetorically asks: “Did Mr. Mathews give me an apology as a point of generosity, on my desisting to demand it? –He affirms he did.” [6] Sheridan just didn’t quit.
Despite being the cause of disgrace to his family, Sheridan wrote to his father “I returned here [to Bath] on Friday evening. I am very snugly situated in Town…” And so once returned, the young couple found both their fathers’ forbidding them to see each other again. [7] Naturally, they ignored parental dissatisfaction and continued the tryst. This is evidenced in Sheridan’s bill for goods “Bought of William Evill, In the Market Place” between 20 November, 1771 and 9 September 1772 where his bachelor days’ most extravagant expense recorded at this particular shop was for “1 neat Toothpick Case.” However, between 10 of June, and 9 of September, 1772, after his secret marriage, return to Bath, and order to never see Elizabeth again, he purchases “1 neat Hair Locket,” “1 neat fancy Ring,” “1 neat Gilt Watch Key,” “1 pair neat Garment Buttons,” and other assorted costly items and services including “fitting a Picture in a Case.” Possibly fearful of a third duel, he ran to the shop on the 9th of September to purchase “2 neat German hollow Blades to Swords with Vellum Scabbards, neat Steel and Gold.” [8]
One can assume Richard bought these items because of his involvement with Elizabeth, and the two “were able to meet only clandestinely, and to exchange furtive letters and verses which were left for each other in a grotto on the banks of the Avon.” [9]

Above: “Bought of William Evill,” courtesy of the Bath Central Library

__
Cited Above:
[1] William Lowndes, Royal Crescent in Bath: A Fragment of English Life (Bristol, The Redcliffe Press, 1981). 36-38
[2] Ibid, 34.
[3] Cedric Price, ed., The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 27.
[4] Lowndes, 38.
[5]Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Letter to the Printer of the Bath Chronicle?” (May-Jun 1772) in C. Price, ed., The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 27.
[6] Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Letter to Captain Knight” (Jul 1772) in C. Price, ed., The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 33.
[7] Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Letter to Thomas Sheridan, Esq.” (May-Jun 1772) in C. Price, ed., The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 34.
[8] Bought of William Evill, In the Market Place, [Bill for] Mr. Sheridan (Bath: 20 Nov 1771-9 Sep 1772)
[9] Lowndes, 38.

Symmetry is important, yes, but taxes are costly. [More info soon to come.]

What’s interesting between these two blind windows on the same building is that both were originally designed to be filled with ashlar and to represent sash windows. However, the photo on the top, has glazing bars, while the one below only has them painted on! The top photo’s bay faces the corner facing the park.

The hexagonal Sydney Gardens in Bathwick is faced on its west side by two streets called Sydney Place. Between the two leads to Great Pulteney St. The northern Sydney Place was designed by Thomas Baldwin in 1792 and the southern street was designed by John Pinch the Elder in 1808. Both were Surveyors to the Pulteney Estate, respectively. At any rate, these are details of the two townhouses at each end of the row. The first six photos are from 93 SP on the corner of Sydney Place and Tourville Street with all of these blind windows, the porch above the ground floor is Victorian. During the Georgian period, these townhouses would have been rented out for the season and in fact Queen Charlotte stayed at 93 Sydeny Place.

Below: These last two photos are from the corner of Darlington and Sydney Place at 103 Sydney Place. It’s an elaborate porch for a very visible corner.

Here in this coda, the Abbey doors are being closed after the procession:
“Mayoral Procession Part 4 of 3: From the Guildhall, Around the Abbey, Into the Abbey“
Opened or being closed is quite rare,
but these people out front really don’t care.