No. 3 With Railings

No. 3 Queen Square with Railings

A large house, now converted to offices, located on the east side of Queen Square in Bath. Built between 1729 and 1734 by John Wood the Elder, this Grade I listed building is constructed of limestone ashlar with a slate roof.

The house is a grand, symmetrically designed wide-frontage property, part of a group of six houses on the east side of the square. It rises to three storeys over an attic and basement. The principal elevation displays five windows, all of which are plain sashes. Two pairs of sashes on the second floor are set within eared architraves, while the first floor features a deeper sash with architraves and a straight cornice hood on a pulvinated frieze. The ground floor and basement sashes are set in splayed surrounds. Above the basement runs a drip course, and above the ground floor a platband. The roofline is finished with a modillion cornice displaying a very shallow blocking course and parapet, this detail continuing from the adjoining No. 2. Three small dormer windows penetrate the mansard roof.

The principal entrance comprises a central seven-panel door set between pilasters enriched with egg-and-dart moulding. The doorcase is surmounted by an open pediment with a central raised panel carved with fruit ornament. Lion-head stops with drops and a central swag enliven the composition. Party walls at each end are marked by coped divisions with substantial ashlar chimney stacks.

The interior, partially inspected in December 1986, contains various original features of distinction. The basement includes half-glazed doors with 1½-inch ovolo glazing bars and ½-inch fillets, together with two ovolo panels below. A staircase features a Doric colonnette on vase banisters. The second floor retains unmoulded panelling and original architrave fireplaces in the front and back south rooms.

A cottage at the rear, believed to predate Wood's development and originally a farmhouse, is linked to the main house by passages at ground and basement levels. This cottage contains a kitchen with a substantial fireplace featuring a mantelpiece supported on cyma-and-cavetto-moulded brackets, the remains of an old dresser with six Doric column legs, and various six-panel and ovolo doors with period mouldings. Upper floors include rooms with collar trusses and pairs of casements. A return staircase features Doric newels with bulbous Doric colonnette-on-vase banisters.

Basement areas are enclosed by simple cast iron railings mounted on stone curbs, returned to the doorway opening.

The houses on the east side of Queen Square were the earliest to be built as part of Wood's development, and relatively plain in character compared to later additions. This particular property, along with No. 2, was taken by Richard Child, Earl Tylney, a circumstance that possibly explains their identical carved doorcases—both representing a late flourishing of Baroque stone-carving. The original glazing bars have been lost, and the first floor windows have been lowered, though notably there was never a sill band as found in adjoining houses.

John Wood leased the site from Robert Gay from 1728 onwards and granted underleases between 1729 and 1731 to various developers. The houses are first recorded as occupied in the rate books in 1734. Wood's original intention to level the sloping site was abandoned on grounds of cost. Queen Square represents an exceptional example of 18th-century town planning, the first large-scale instance of such coordinated urban design in Bath. Drawing on precedents from contemporary London house-building, Wood created a monumental ensemble on a previously undeveloped slope to the west of the former city walls. Each side of the square forms a symmetrical composition, though no two sides are identical. Queen Square stands as the earliest and lowest element in the sequence of architectural set-pieces by the Woods, a progression that culminates in the celebrated Royal Crescent.