House in which Bishop Hooper was imprisoned, Westgate Street, Gloucester
The last and grievous rule of iconoclasm set in with the restorers, who worked their will upon the fabric of our cathedrals and churches and did so much to obliterate all the fragments of good architectural work which the Cromwellian soldiers and the spoliators at the time of the Reformation had left. The memory of Wyatt and his imitators is not revered when we see the results of their work on our ecclesiastical fabrics, and we need not wonder that so much of English art has vanished.
The cathedral of Bristol suffered from other causes. The darkest spot in the history of the city is the story of the Reform riots of 1831, sometimes called "the Bristol Revolution," when the dregs of the population pillaged and plundered, burnt the bishop's palace, and were guilty of the most atrocious vandalism.
The "Stone House," Rye, Sussex
The city of Bath, once the rival of Wells—the contention between the monks of St. Peter and the canons of St. Andrews at Wells being hot and fierce—has many attractions. Its minster, rebuilt by Bishop Oliver King of Wells (1495-1503), and restored in the seventeenth century, and also in modern times, is not a very interesting building, though it lacks not some striking features, and certainly contains some fine tombs and monuments of the fashionable folk who flocked to Bath in the days of its splendour. The city itself abounds in interest. It is a gem of Georgian art, with a complete homogeneous architectural character of its own which makes it singular and unique. It is full of memories of the great folks who thronged its streets, attended the Bath and Pump Room, and listened to sermons in the Octagon. It tells of the autocracy of Beau Nash, of Goldsmith, Sheridan, David Garrick, of the "First Gentleman of Europe," and many others who made Bath famous. And now it is likely that this unique little city with its memories and its charming architectural features is to be mutilated for purely commercial reasons. Every one knows Bath Street with its colonnaded loggias on each side terminated with a crescent at each end, and leading to the Cross Bath in the centre of the eastern crescent. That the original founders of Bath Street regarded it as an important architectural feature of the city is evident from the inscription in abbreviated Latin which was engraved on the first stone of the street when laid:—
PRO
VRBIS DIG: ET AMP:
HÆC PON: CVRAV:
SC:
DELEGATI
A: D: MDCCXCI.
I: HORTON, PRAET:
T: BALDWIN, ARCHITECTO.
which may be read to the effect that "for the dignity and enlargement (of the city) the delegates I. Horton, Mayor, and T. Baldwin, architect, laid this (stone) A.D. 1791."
It is actually proposed by the new proprietors of the Grand Pump Hotel to entirely destroy the beauty of this street by removing the colonnaded loggia on one side of this street and constructing a new side to the hotel two or three storeys higher, and thus to change the whole character of the street and practically destroy it. It is a sad pity, and we should have hoped that the city Council would have resisted very strongly the proposal that the proprietors of the hotel have made to their body. But we hear that the Council is lukewarm in its opposition to the scheme, and has indeed officially approved it. It is astonishing what city and borough councils will do, and this Bath Council has "the discredit of having, for purely commercial reasons, made the first move towards the destruction architecturally of the peculiar charm of their unique and beautiful city."[42]