LAUNCHED onto the market in recent weeks at a guide price of £6.5 million through Savills (01225 474501), the exquisite, Grade I-listed 25, Royal Crescent, Bath, is one of only a handful of complete townhouses in single private ownership in this most prestigious of English addresses. The first crescent of terraced houses ever constructed in England, the Royal Crescent was designed by John Wood the Elder and built by his son, John Wood the Younger, who became Bath’s principal architect following his father’s death in 1754.
Between 1767 and 1775, Wood created the 500ft-long curved façade with its 114 Ionic columns. An ingenious sales concept allowed each original purchaser to buy a length of the façade and commission his own architect to build a house behind it to his own specification—thus what may appear to be two houses is occasionally only one. This novel approach to town planning, which contrasts an imposing, uniform, front façade with a mix of differing roof heights and fenestration at the rear— irreverently described as ‘Queen Anne fronts and Mary-Anne backs’—can be found in developments throughout Bath.
At 25, Royal Crescent, the original coach house behind the house has been cleverly converted to a three-bedroom, three-bathroom annexe with a large kitchen/reception room and independent access from Crescent Lane. The complex includes a double garage and a gated courtyard for off-road parking, with the original stables providing additional parking and outbuildings. Immediately behind the house is a raised terrace, with steps leading down to a lawn flanked by stone pathways and herbaceous borders. Beyond this, a ha-ha prevents animals grazing the parkland below from straying onto the more formal garden areas.
Denne historien er fra March 25, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 25, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
