No 18, Queen Square

No. 18, Queen Square, Bath

This Grade I listed building was originally one of a distinct row of three large houses, subsequently united to form the Bath Reference Library and now the premises of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. It was designed by John Pinch the Younger in 1830.

The building is constructed in limestone ashlar with a slate roof. It is a wide, double-depth Greek Revival structure in three storeys with an attic and basement, comprising nine bays. The central three bays are brought forward and feature a raised attic. Windows throughout are sashes: the basement has three sixteen-pane and three twelve-pane windows with doors under three landings. The ground floor is channelled with no voussoirs, and the channelling stops to the reveals, all beneath a deep platband serving as the base to giant pilasters. Fluted Ionic giant three-quarter columns rise to the full entablature with a dentil cornice over the central three bays. The first floor windows have inset quarter pilasters carrying a frieze with anthemion decoration running the full width of the front. Above the cornice are plain square pedestals with low pitched pedimented cappings (these formerly carried balustrades, now removed). The central attic features similar but higher pedestals. Each end of the front has plain returns with deep ashlar stacks, brought forward as high parapets. A deep stack also rises to the right of bay six. The second floor features twelve-pane windows above twelve-pane at ground floor level, except to bays one through three which are plain. There are three dormers on each side of the central attic, each with twelve-pane windows. The far right has a wide panelled door under a plain transom light in deep reveals; doors previously also existed to bays three and six, now converted to windows. The rear elevation, in ashlar block, features windows in plain reveals: six twelve-pane windows above four large casements, two fifteen-pane windows dropped to staircase landings, four deep replacement lights and two staircase windows at a lower level, and smaller twelve-pane windows at the lowest level, with a small projecting square extension.

The interior has not been fully inspected. Stairs to the rear of the former No. 16 are characteristic Regency Greek Revival design executed in cast iron with palmette decoration. Fine plasterwork is visible on the ceiling of the first floor front room of No. 18. The first floor ceilings of the front rooms of Nos. 16 and 17 frame four paintings of single figures—Pan, Pomona, Ceres, and a winged deity—painted by Casali (in England 1745–67) for Alderman Beckford's Fonthill Splendens and sold by his son William in 1801. They were moved here from Dance's Theatre Royal after it burned down. Each house has two front rooms. Good cast iron balustrades survive on the staircases of Nos. 16 and 18. All fireplaces have been removed; an original white Greek Revival statuary marble one with carving was illustrated by Nigel Bartlett in Country Life on 5 March 1987, page 75. No. 16 retains an original four-panel door and architrave to the staircase landing. No. 17 retains original sashes with slender astragal-and-hollow glazing bars.

Across the whole frontage, cast iron railings on a stone curb run returned to the doorway, with a staircase and gateway at each end and two landings remaining leading to former doorways. A stable or service building spans the full width of the site at the rear, with a hipped slate roof carrying a hipped lantern.

The present row was inserted in 1830 to fill a gap in Queen Square's development. John Wood had originally designed a Palladian villa (actually a pair of semi-detached houses) set back some distance from the street and flanked by two advanced wings that comprise Nos. 14–15 and 18A–20, an arrangement similar to that on the north side of Cavendish Square in London and depicted around 1780 by Thomas Malton. The Greek Revival elevation is notable in its own right, though somewhat at variance with Wood's Palladianism. A bronze plaque on No. 16 records the residence of Dr Oliver in one of the houses to the rear. John Wood leased the site from Robert Gay from 1728 onwards and granted underleases between 1729 and 1731 to various developers; the houses are first recorded as occupied in the rate books in 1734. Wood originally intended to level the sloping site but abandoned this plan on grounds of cost.