Summerhill And Attached Balustrades

Summerhill and attached balustrades

House, now school (part of Kingswood School), forming a continuation to the left of No. 1 Sion Hill Place. The building dates from the mid-1930s but incorporates as its west front a facade of circa 1738 by John Wood the Elder. This facade was removed from a house in Chippenham and grafted onto the new block in 1936.

The materials are limestone ashlar with an unseen roof. The exterior presents two storeys across seven bays. The west garden front features balustraded panels to the parapet with moulded coping and plinth, a modillion cornice and frieze, pediments, Corinthian pilasters and blind balustrades to the first floor windows. The ground floor has a platband over chamfered rustication and plinth, with paired Corinthian engaged columns bearing a pediment with pineapple finials. An implied Venetian window to the first floor consists of a semicircular arched six/nine-pane sash window with one and a quarter pilasters supporting an entablature at impost level, repeated between paired outer columns over narrow sashes with quarter pilasters. The central ground floor window is an arched nine/three sash window, flanked by slender two/two sashed lights. Two outer ranges to the first floor of each side are articulated by Corinthian pilasters flanking six/six-pane sash windows, those to the first floor pedimented. An additional frieze between the capitals of columns and pilasters is ornately carved with masks flanked by fruit and flowers. The parapet continues without balustrades or modillions along the returns.

To the right and centre of the first floor of the left return are semicircular arched recesses with raised keystones over six/six-pane sash windows. To the left of each is a lead rainwater head and downpipe. To the left is a Venetian window over an enclosed porch with pediment on brackets and a set-back six-panel door. The ground floor centre and right have flat arched recesses with a six/six-pane sash window to the right and a blind window to the centre. A three-storey, three-window range on the right return in Summerhill Place (not aligned with it) has moulded architraves to blind windows on the upper floors. The centre section steps forward under a modillion cornice.

The interior has not been inspected but is thought to include panelled rooms from the Chippenham house.

The west front has curved steps up to a raised forecourt enclosed by fine balustrades attached to each corner. These balustrades extend approximately 8 metres forward and curve inward to flank the steps. They date from the initial, Eveleigh, phase of Summerhill in the late 1780s.

The original house on this site was built for Caleb Hillier Parry, an affluent doctor who was also involved in the promotion of Camden Crescent to Eveleigh's design. This house, also by Eveleigh, was among the earliest buildings to be erected in the city's north-west fringes and was sited to take advantage of the fine picturesque hilltop situation. The surviving balustrade echoes this former amenity. The house was occupied by Sir Robert Blaine, sometime Mayor of Bath, from 1867 to 1897, and burnt down in 1912.

In the mid-1930s Ernest Cook, the newly retired grandson of travel agent Thomas Cook and occupant of Nos. 1, 2 and 9 Sion Hill Place, saved the John Wood facade from demolition and extended his Bath house by adding it to a new block. He created a fitting setting for his noted picture collection by using Bath builders Axford & Smith to enlarge his house using the Chippenham front (from Nos. 24 and 25 High Street, now Woolworths). New masonry side walls were constructed and picture galleries, known as the Chippenham Galleries, on two floors measuring 45 feet by 30 feet, were formed inside the Wood facade.

The Wood facade has probably been moved not once but twice. It is believed to have been designed for the house at Bowden Hill, Wiltshire of Benjamin Styles MP in 1738, but after his death the unfinished house was sold to a Chippenham clothier, Thomas Figgins, and re-erected there between 1749 and 1777. Stylistically the facade resembles Wood the Elder's designs for the Exchange at Bristol.

Cook's mansion was purchased by Kingswood School in 1956.