33, Gay Street

GAY STREET (East side) No.33 (Formerly Listed as: GAY STREET Nos.31-40 (Consec)) 12/06/50

GV II

House, now shop with accommodation over. c1735-1740 with C20 alterations. By John Wood the Elder. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate mansard roof with dormer. PLAN: Double depth plan. EXTERIOR: Three storeys with attic and basement. Two-window range with roof half hipped to right with stack to rear, paired windows to upper floors, six/six-pane sashes to second floor and plate glass sashes to first floor, rusticated quoin to right, steps up to a set back six-panel door with reeded lintel and radial glazing bars to semicircular fanlight flanked by C20 pilasters and cornice. 1920-1930 shop window to right canted out and supported by railings to basement area that has paired three/six-pane sash windows. Paired flat-topped dormer with plain plate glass sashes. Rear elevation not seen. INTERIOR: Not inspected. HISTORY: Gay Street is named after Robert Gay, a surgeon of Hatton Garden and landowner of this area. Leases were granted a few months after the death of John Wood the Elder, in May 1754. The road forms a steeply rising link between Wood¿s two principal urban set-pieces. The southern part (now comprising Nos. 31-41 Gay Street) were originally known as Barton Street, and predated the remainder of the street by some twenty years. No. 33 is a part of an irregular terrace of three houses returned from George Street and developed in conjunction with Nos. 2-12 George Street (qv). The ground lease for the whole plot was taken by John Wood on 6th August 1733; the building leases were granted from 1734 on, and the Gay Street houses were inhabited and rated by 1740. This house looks as if it was probably one of the last built. This is the least cohesive and most altered stretch of Gay Street: hence its lower grade than the other sections. SOURCES: (Mowbray Green, `The Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bath (1904), 140-143; Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bath: Bath: 1980: 130, 228; Finch G: Shopfront Record, Bath City Council: 1992).

Listing NGR: ST7481965107