Camden Crescent in
Bath
Bath may refer to:
* Bathing, immersion in a fluid
** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body
** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe
* Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities
Plac ...
,
Somerset
Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...
, England, was built by
John Eveleigh in 1788; it was originally known as Upper Camden Place. Numbers 6 to 21 have been designated as a Grade I
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
s.
The other houses are Grade II listed.
The houses are of three storeys, with attics and basements. At the southern end of the crescent the basements are at ground level because of the contours of the land. In 1889 a landslide demolished 9 houses at the east end of the crescent. The remains of the houses were demolished and removed to allow Hedgemead Park to be built. This means that the two paired doors of numbers 16 and 17, which stand beneath a
pediment
Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In an ...
supported by five
Corinthian columns at what would have been the centre of the crescent,
no longer form its middle. The arms of
Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden
Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, PC (baptism, baptised 21 March 1714 – 18 April 1794) was an English lawyer, judge and Whig (British political faction), Whig politician who was first to hold the titl ...
, after whom the crescent was named, are on the doorway keystones along with an elephant's head which was his symbol.
In July 1951 Number 1 Camden Crescent was the scene of an abduction when
John Straffen
John Thomas Straffen (27 February 1930 – 19 November 2007) was an English serial killer who committed the murder of three preadolescence, prepubescent girls between the ages of five and nine in the counties of Somerset and Berkshire, England, ...
took five-year-old Brenda Goddard and later killed her.
In
Jane Austen's ''Persuasion'' (1818), the Elliot family rent lodgings on Camden Place, as the Crescent was then known. In
Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer (; 16 August 1902 – 4 July 1974) was an English novelist and short-story writer, in both the Regency romance and detective fiction genres. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story conceived for her ail ...
's ''
Lady of Quality'' (1972), which is set in
Regency era
The Regency era of British history is commonly understood as the years between and 1837, although the official regency for which it is named only spanned the years 1811 to 1820. King George III first suffered debilitating illness in the lat ...
Bath, her heroine Annis Wychwood owns one of the houses there.
See also
*
Grade I listed buildings in Bath and North East Somerset
Bath and North East Somerset (commonly referred to as BANES or B&NES) is a unitary authority created on 1 April 1996, following the abolition of the County of Avon, which had existed since 1974. Part of the ceremonial county of Somerset
...
References
{{reflist
Houses completed in 1788
Grade I listed buildings in Bath, Somerset
Streets in Bath, Somerset
Crescents (architecture)
1788 establishments in England
18th century in Bath, Somerset