Rosewell House

Rosewell House, Kingsmead Square (West side), comprising Nos. 12, 13 and 14 Kingsmead Square and No. 2 Kingsmead Street

A large house forming the west side of Kingsmead Square, laid out by Strahan in 1727. Dated 1735 and possibly designed by John Strahan for Thomas Rosewell. The building is constructed of limestone ashlar with a slate roof.

The house presents a compact symmetrical block with a long wing returning as No. 2 Kingsmead Street, displaying rich Baroque detail particularly to the front elevation. The main front is of three storeys and attic, with five windows of twelve-pane sashes on each side of a wide central bay containing a twenty-pane sash above a sixteen-pane sash. Three flat-roofed dormers occupy the mansard roof. The ground floor features a wide inserted shopfront on each side of a pair of panelled doors set within an unfluted Ionic portico with pediment. Second-floor windows have eared architraves with keystones and raised centres, on moulded sills beneath cornices with friezes to dropped ends. First-floor architraves are eared with segmental heads and keystones bearing high-relief carved heads on moulded sills with scroll brackets. The centre bay contains a particularly fine cartouche surround to the upper window, with a very deep keystone bearing an armorial Rosewell device (a rose and well) and the date 1735. The first-floor window features a cornice supported by Atlantes on deep pedestals and a moulded architrave with segmental head. Moulded cornices sit above the ground floor and, broken out from the first floor, rise to the eaves on bold consoles above the windows, with a raised segmental open pediment over the centre bay. The centre and ends are framed by plain square pilasters with broken cornices and channelled pilasters to the ground floor. The roof is coped to the left with a deep stack and returns to a hip, with a wide stack to the rear.

The return to Kingsmead Street extends for eight bays with similar but simplified detail. The mansard features a three-light dormer raised to form a full attic with three small sashes. The second floor has three blind lights—two segmental-headed twelve-pane sashes within pilasters on deep sills with brackets, and three flat segmental-headed twelve-pane sashes in pairs to common sills. The first floor exhibits a similar arrangement with two larger units having broad architraves to scrolled feet and deep keystones inflected to the cornice. Two poor twentieth-century shopfronts and a central door set to deep plain reveals occupy the ground floor. Cornices continue from the front elevation, with the upper cornice featuring scroll brackets above windows. A large stack to the right is shared with No. 3 Kingsmead Street. The rear elevation is of rubble with a variety of small lights in both sashes and casements, mostly altered from the original fenestration.

The interiors have not been inspected during listing, but contemporary sources record good quality panelling and other detail, together with a fine mahogany and oak staircase. The staircase features three turned balusters per tread, some twisted, with fluted columnar newel posts and panelling to dado level. A photograph in the National Monument Record shows unusual plasterwork inside No. 13, reportedly executed by a modeller named Sheldon who lived in the house. This includes antique reliefs, frames of palm fronds, and heads in the ceiling corners.

Rosewell House is classified Grade I as an outstanding example of a Baroque town house, of the type rendered unfashionable by John Wood's Palladian orthodoxy. Wood himself dismissed it as containing "nothing save ornaments without taste". Its exuberant external decoration remains unsurpassed not only in Bath but elsewhere at this date, marking the culmination of a tradition of decorative masonry. A bronze plaque records that Bishop Butler (1692–1752), Bishop of Durham, resided here.