1 And 2, Park Cottages

PARK COTTAGES 656-1/29/2425 Nos.1 AND 2 (Formerly Listed as: VICTORIA PARK Nos 1 and 2 Park Cottages) 05/08/75

GV II*

Cottages, now one house. 1831. By Edward Davis. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar with Cotswold stone slate roof. PLAN: Paired cottages designed to look like one 'Picturesque Gothic' farmhouse. Designed to look like two-bay house with cross-wing but No.1 to left has rear wing as well. EXTERIOR: Two storeys, three windows to front, two:one, with right hand set forward as cross-wing. Ground floor has two-light window to left, three-light in centre and tripartite window to right. All have stone mullions, lattice lights and drip moulds over. Right hand window was doorway flanked by windows, door in Tudor arch with head set higher than side lights (see Whalley for original appearance). Doorway set between left hand windows and in gabled porch, Tudor arched head, vertically panelled door, date plaque in gable, fretted bargeboards. Upper floor has two-light windows to left as below, without hoodmoulds. To right four-light canted oriel. Bargeboarded gables with pendants to all three. Steeply pitched roof with tall ashlar stacks with octagonal shafts, paired to left, four to right. Both gable ends have similar windows. Rear elevation not seen. INTERIOR: Not inspected. HISTORY: These cottages formed the park keepers' residences, serving the country's earliest municipal park, laid out to Edward Davis's designs from 1831. This highly Picturesque composition, originally called Park Farm House, forms part of an outstanding group of structures, along with the Victoria Obelisk and the Soane-inspired entrance gates. Few other groups in the country embody so graphically the architectural taste of the 1830s. SOURCES: R. Whalley, 'The Royal Victoria Park', Bath History III (1994), 147-169; M. Forsyth, 'Edward Davis', Bath History VII (1998), 112; Neil Jackson, 'Nineteenth Century Bath. Architects and Architecture' (1991), 96-98.

Listing NGR: ST7422265328