Cold Bath South West of Downton Castle

Cold Bath South West of Downton Castle

A bath house, now largely ruinous, built in the 1780s by Richard Payne Knight and standing within the Picturesque landscape he created at Downton Castle.

The Cold Bath is constructed partly in dressed stone and partly in stone rubble with stone dressings. It has an unusual plan form comprising three connected oval-shaped rooms with an entrance tunnel to one side. Two of the three rooms are now roofless ruins. The room containing the plunge bath retains a domed stone rubble roof with a central oculus open to the sky.

The smallest room functioned as an outer atrium and changing room. The medium-sized room contained a cold plunge pool. The largest room was formerly heated and intended for use after bathing. The walls of the outer atrium and rest room remain standing in most parts, and the oval-shaped domed cold bath is mostly intact. Along its south side runs a small flight of steps that formerly led to a path descending the gorge to a former Rustic Bridge spanning the River Teme.

Inside the domed room is an oval-shaped plunge bath with steps along one side leading into it. On the wall above the bath is a small niche, probably where water formerly entered to fill the pool, fed from a nearby spring.

Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824), an art collector and writer most famous for his influential role within the Picturesque Movement and his didactic poem 'The Landscape', commissioned this bathhouse in the 1780s. The Cold Bath stands within the Picturesque landscape he created at Downton, which included several other features: rustic bridges over the River Teme, a water mill, caves, a tunnel, and cottages. The bathhouse was positioned along a dramatic cliff walk laid out through the gorge, designed to give visitors a series of Picturesque views of the landscape and its features. Its approach led through a secluded glade planted with yew trees (several mature specimens survive), with steps descending the steep gorge to a former Alpine Bridge spanning the River Teme. A small late 18th-century plan of the Cold Bath exists, showing its three oval-shaped connected rooms. Some views of the landscape and its features are depicted in a series of paintings by Thomas Hearne, commissioned by Richard Payne Knight in the mid-1780s when his landscape was near completion.