Bath I: Baroque in the City

      Just back from a few days in Bath - a treat to celebrate the bf's significant birthday. We couldn't have had nicer weather, for what was our second visit. Our first visit is chronicled is here. Our two days away were spent mainly spent ambling around the city, immersed in a mixture of shopping and architecture. However our peregrinations did take in deliberate visits to The Museum of East Asian Art (which we enjoyed) and two favourite bookshops of ours: Persephone Books and Bath Old Books, without which a visit to the city would be incomplete. We also went on a jaunt to Bradford-on-Avon yesterday, but more about that in future posts.

      As you can imagine I took a fair number of photographs, but I'd like to start with those I took of the baroque buildings of the city - an attempt to catalogue the Baroque architecture of the city, a style not readily associated with Bath where the overwhelming  majority of historic buildings labour under the undue influence of English Neo-Palladianism. With the buildings that will appear in the next blog about our little jaunt down the line to Bradford-on-Avon it is possible to discern a local Baroque style. Firstly the majority of buildings have a resault, or risalto, of a single bay emphasized by a stack of aedicules - each essentially of a single storey in height. Perhaps they can be related to Vanbrugh House in Oxford, where the resault consists of a single giant order aedicule. Secondly the influence of French architecture. One way of understanding the rise of Neo-Palladianism is to see it as a self-conscious attempt to break the French influence in British art.

     We ate so well in Bath, it has to be said, there were two particular highlights. There  was dinner on our first night in the city at 'Sally Lunn's', North Parade Passage; I had a Pork and Walnut terrine, followed by a beautiful looking, and tasting, beef pie. Beef pie was also on the menu at the vibrant 'Corkage', Chapel Row, where we ate last night. The food was mightily inventive, and it being the bf's actually birthday we did rather indulge; pigeon, sardine, pie and marrow, lemon posset. We then headed off to the Canary Gin Bar in Queen St. Finally I'd like to mention the wonderful breakfasts at our hotel, The Kennard on Henrietta St.