34, Gay Street

GAY STREET (East side) No.34 (Formerly Listed as: GAY STREET Nos.31-40 (Consec)) 12/06/50

GV II

House, now shop with accommodation over. c1735-1740, altered late C19. By John Wood the Elder. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar with slate mansard roof with dormers and moulded stack to right hand party wall. PLAN: Single depth plan, with rear wing. EXTERIOR: Three storeys with attic and basement. House lower than adjoining houses. Coped parapet and stopped cornice, plate glass sash windows with painted splayed reveals, six-panel door to left with semicircular cobweb fanlight. Canted c1870 shop window to right has dentil cornice to fascia, moulded colonnettes and a half-glazed door to their left between moulded pilasters and consoles to continued cornice. Two flat topped dormers with six/six sashes. Rear elevation with weatherboarded extension of 1882 by H.J. Garland, surveyor. INTERIOR: Not inspected. HISTORY: This 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 the Elder 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. The rear extension housed in the later C19 the photographic studio of William Friese-Green, pioneer of the moving image. 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: ST7482065102