Pair Of Arches At Entrance To Royal Avenue From Marlborough Lane

ROYAL VICTORIA PARK 656-1/29/1435 (West side) Pair of arches at entrance to Royal Avenue from Marlborough Lane

(Formerly Listed as: VICTORIA PARK Arches at entrance to Royal Avenue from Marlborough Lane) 11/08/72

GV II

Pair of arches over pedestrian entrances to west side of Royal Victoria Park. Mid-C19. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar. Each arch has piers on plinths with circles to centres of recessed panels and paired corbels to inner sides forming shouldered arch. Lintel similar to piers but smaller in scale, above piers small recessed panels flanked by similar corbels supporting wide cornice and blocking course that forms plinth for stone sphinx. Arch to north incised THE GIFT OF MR REEVES¿, that to southGIVEN BY I WILLIAMS ESQ.¿: these refer to gift of sphinxes. HISTORY: These form elements in the notable group of entrance arches to the park, but differ in design and perhaps date from those at the south-eastern entrance which were definitely by Davis. No gates are shown in this position upon the early plan of c1829 (repr. In Jackson, p.96). The donor 'Mr Reeves' was probably Charles Reeves who ran the busy Bath masons firm of Reeves and Son: it may well have produced the sphinxes, and perhaps other items of masonry here too. Victoria Park was laid out in 1830 on the former Barton Fields, an area of common land and was opened by the Duchess of Kent with her daughter, Princess Victoria, on October 23rd 1830. It was the country's first municipal park. SOURCES: Rupert Gunnis, 'Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851' (rev. ed. c.1966), 317; R Whalley, 'The Royal Victoria Park' in 'Bath History' (1994), 147-169; Neil Jackson, 'Nineteenth Century Bath. Architects and Architecture' (1991), 95-100.

Listing NGR: ST7431665266