Queen Square (Bath)

Queen Square is a square of Georgian houses in the city of Bath, England. Queen Square is the first element in “the most important architectural sequence in Bath”, which includes the Circus and the Royal Crescent.

Queen Square was the first speculative development by the architect John Wood, the Elder, who later lived in a house on the square.

Wood set out to restore Bath to what he believed was its former ancient glory as one of the most important and significant cities in Britain. In 1725 he developed an ambitious plan for his home town:

I began to turn [his] thoughts towards the improvement of the city by building.

Wood's grand plans for Bath were consistently hampered by the Corporation (council), churchmen, landowners and moneymen. Instead he approached Robert Gay, a barber surgeon from London, and the owner of the Barton Farm estate in the Manor of Walcot, outside the city walls. On these fields Wood established Bath’s architectural style, the basic principles of which were copied by all those architects who came after him.

Queen Square is a key component of Wood's vision for Bath. Named in honour of Queen Caroline, wife of George II, it was intended to appear like a palace with wings and a forecourt to be viewed from the south side:

Wood wrote that:

The intention of a square in a city is for people to assemble together.

He understood that polite society enjoyed parading, and in order to do that Wood provided wide streets, with raised pavements, and a thoughtfully designed central garden. The formal garden was laid out with gravel pathways, low planting and was originally enclosed by a stone balustrade. The current railings date from 1978, a replica of the pre-WW2 originals.

With the Palladian buildings at Queen Square, Wood “set fresh standards for urban development in scale, boldness and social consequence.” The elegant and palatial north façade of seven individual townhouses, with emphasis only on the central house to suggest a grand entrance, is heralded as Wood’s greatest triumph, but the other three wings purposefully act as foils to this ostentatious palace front. The east and west sides of the square are the wings of the ‘palace’, enclosing a forecourt. Wood undoubtedly took his inspiration from Inigo Jones’s Covent Garden piazza (1631-7) in London and perhaps Dean Aldrick’s Peckwater Quadrangle at Christ Church, Oxford (1706-10).

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