070705.Bath, King’s Circus

July 5, 2007 at 1:36 AM | Posted in Architecture, Bath, Columns, Corinthian Order, Doric Order, Ionic Order, somerset, Walcot | 8 Comments

Littered with Druidic and Masonic symbols, John Wood the Elder’s final masterpiece was the King’s Circus, built on Barton Fields outside the old city walls of Bath that enclosed the Bimbery. Here, uniform facades and rhythmic proportions in conjunction with classical principles of unerring symmetry were followed throughout the city.

The orders are stacked, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, paying homage to the Coliseum, which is in fact what the structure aims to be…and inverted Coliseum. Naming it a circus denotes his lack of a classical education, as circuses were elliptical. Similarly, his theories on Druidic culture were equally wrong. Nevertheless, this first circus was copied throughout the world, and has been referred to as the model for all urban roundabouts.

posted by JosyC