From an Aquatint by Thomas Malton.
Town-planning on architectural lines can be studied at Bath better, perhaps, than anywhere, but all towns are not equally fortunate in preserving the original character of their buildings. Pulteney Street, attributed to Thomas Baldwin, was laid out about 1780 with good residences, and to close its vista there was a carefully designed house, pleasant to look upon. Eventually, however, this house fell into decay, the character of the street changed, and its general aspect, instead of being fine, became depressing. Its very virtues emphasised its decline. The house has now been restored, and the whole street has once more become cheerful. But local enterprise is not everywhere so vigorous as at Bath, and decay in a scheme of this kind cannot always be arrested. Pulteney Bridge, which leads to the street of the same name, carries a row of narrow shops on each side, and presents much the same appearance as shown in Fig. [184]. But the shops are necessarily small, low, and shallow, and they can have no chance of expanding or of keeping pace with other premises not thus restricted. Their relative importance is therefore much smaller than it was at the time when they were built. An example of a row of houses dealt with as a piece of architecture, and one which has suffered little, if at all, from change, is the Royal Crescent (Fig. [185]). It was designed by the younger Wood in 1769.
Fig. 185.—The Royal Crescent, Bath, 1769.
Fig. 186.—REDDISH MANOR, BROAD CHALK, Wilts.
Fig. 187.—WIDCOMBE MANOR HOUSE, BATH.
The abundance and excellent quality of the stone in the Bath district greatly facilitated the erection of new houses both in the city and the neighbourhood. It was susceptible of delicate detail, and lent itself admirably to the classic work then in vogue, which indeed could never have obtained a footing save through the medium of stone. Throughout the district there are to be found good houses of the time of the Woods, houses which are not large, which have no pretensions to vie with Prior Park, yet which are handsomely treated, and have had considerable skill and some learning bestowed upon their design. Such a one is Widcombe Manor House (Fig. [187]), of which, however, it must be observed that it would be useless to undertake such a house unless one were prepared to spend a considerable amount for the sake of architectural effect. It is interesting to contrast with this product of the stone district a house in the adjoining county of Wilts.—Reddish Manor, Broad Chalk (Fig. [186]). The walls here are of brick and the ornament is of stone, but apparently either the stone or the money gave out by the time the roof was reached, for the cornice and the pediment are of brick, and it is seen at once how impossible it was to carry out classic detail in the ordinary brick of the district, and with the limited skill of the ordinary workman. Nevertheless the result is attractive, and it prompts the somewhat disconcerting question, whether the fancy is not as much tickled by the efforts of the obscure and half-educated designer, as by the correct and skilful handling of the trained architect? Accidents of colour and situation, the effects of time and weather, and above all, individuality of treatment, are as potent factors in impressing the imagination as book-learning and careful adherence to rules of proportion; and in admiring the great houses of the eighteenth century, and Campbell, Gibbs, and the hierarchy of architects who produced them, one longs to meet some unexpected difficulty successfully surmounted, some state of things not contemplated in the books, which should prove that the man had an invention, an imagination, one might almost say a soul, of his own.
The custom of building large houses with detached wings survived well into the middle of the eighteenth century. It will be remembered that Isaac Ware, in his “Complete Body of Architecture” (1756), gives elaborate rules for the proportions and disposition of such edifices; Holkham Hall, in Norfolk, designed by Kent about 1734, and Kedleston Hall, in Derbyshire, designed by James Paine in 1761, are two notable examples still in existence.