Bloomfield Crescent Nos. 1-7 (Consec) Including Gate Piers

Bloomfield Crescent Nos. 1–7 is a terrace of seven houses, originally eight, built between 1793 and 1795 to designs by Charles Harcourt Masters. The terrace has been altered with 19th and 20th-century additions.

The principal north-facing elevation is constructed from limestone ashlar, while the rear south façade is built from stone rubble, rendered in parts, beneath slate roofs. Originally, each house was a single-depth plan with three storeys plus basement on the north elevation and two storeys plus basement on the south. In the mid-19th century, Nos. 1 and 7 (originally No. 8) were extended with double-depth additions of three and four storeys respectively. In the late 19th century, all houses except the left-hand portion of No. 4 (formerly No. 5) were heightened on the south elevation with the addition of a third storey.

The principal elevation is asymmetric in composition around a central pedimented house with short returns with splayed sides at either end, the eastern return immediately adjoining the street. Four houses are positioned to the east of the central house and three to the west, creating a sixteen-bay composition. Each house has two windows to each floor. A platband separates each floor, with a block cornice, blocking course, coped parapet and plain pilasters at each end. The central pedimented house (No. 4) is set within plain pilasters and features a pointed niche containing a statue of an unidentified female, believed to represent Euterpe, one of the nine Muses. Large ashlar party-wall stacks serve each house, with smaller ashlar stacks serving the mid-19th-century extensions. Although most fenestration has been replaced, some windows retain sixteen-pane sashes with thin plaster linings to the reveals.

The convex rear façade comprises a series of varied houses built to order beneath different roof structures, separated by coped gables. Each house has a single window to each floor. Nos. 1 and 2 contain plain sashes, while the remainder of the crescent, excepting the four-pane sashes to the upper storeys of Nos. 5 and 6 (formerly Nos. 6 and 7), have 20th and early 21st-century twelve-pane sashes. The mid-19th-century splayed additions to Nos. 1 and 7 (formerly No. 8) are canted at both corners. The addition to No. 1 adjoins No. 264 Bloomfield Road and is four storeys high with platbands to the first and second floors, a block cornice to the third floor, and a moulded cornice, blocking course and coped parapet. The addition to No. 7 (formerly No. 8) is three storeys over a basement with a platband at first floor level, a moulded cornice to the second floor, and a moulded cornice, blocking course and coped parapet; the returns feature alternating square-edged quoins. To Nos. 1, 2 and 7 (formerly No. 8) are late-19th to early 20th-century two-storey ashlar additions comprising a porch on the ground floor with a water closet above. The porch to No. 1 is now covered with a 20th-century stepped porch bay with panelled pilasters, frieze, cornice and blocking course raised at the centre. At Nos. 3 and 4 (formerly No. 5) are flat-roofed first-floor water closet additions carried on cast iron columns over doorways containing swept-back panelled doors in raised plat surrounds. The water closet to No. 3 now has a late-20th-century conservatory on the flat roof. At street level are basement openings with iron grilles.

The interiors of Nos. 3, 5 and 6 retain much original joinery, decorative plasterwork and fireplaces. No. 6 also contains a copper clothes-washing kettle.

At the entrance to Bloomfield Crescent stands a pair of rusticated gate piers, each surmounted by carved beehive finials. Enclosing a small courtyard to the rear are stables and a coach house, neither of special interest. To the west of No. 7 is a summerhouse, believed to have been the crescent's wash house, not of special interest.

The crescent, originally called Cottage Crescent, was built in then open countryside on the north-facing slope of Odd Down, offering extensive views over the city. This was the earliest known work of Charles Harcourt Masters, an architect and land surveyor who also constructed an accurate scale model of Bath in 1789 and designed Sydney Hotel (now the Holbourne Museum, 1796–97) and Widcombe Crescent (c.1805), both Grade I listed, as well as the Grade II listed Sydney Gardens, opened in 1795.

Following the precedent of the Royal Crescent (1767–75), Harcourt Masters designed Bloomfield Crescent to turn its back to the street with a plain entrance façade and strategically placed staircases at the rear so that principal rooms commanded picturesque views of the city. This reflected the late-18th-century shift away from urban, inward-looking developments towards rural retreats with outward prospects.

The scheme included a coach house, stables, gate piers, communal gardens and walled kitchen gardens. Residents were also provided with their own water supply from a spring and well.

The noted geologist William Smith, known as the Father of English Geology, lived at No. 4 from 1795 to 1798 whilst supervising work on the Somersetshire Coal Canal.