Description

KINGSMEAD SQUARE
(West side)

Nos.12, 13 AND 14
Rosewell House

12/06/50

GV I

Includes: No.2 KINGSMEAD STREET. Large house, forming west side of Kingsmead Square, laid out by Strahan in 1727. Dated 1735, possibly by John Strahan, for Thomas Rosewell.
MATERIAL: Limestone ashlar, slate roof.
PLAN: Compact symmetrical block, with long wing returning as No. 2, Kingsmead Street, with rich baroque detail, especially to front.
EXTERIOR: Three storeys and attic, five windows, twelve-pane sash each side of wide central bay with twenty above sixteen-pane, three flat roofed dormers in mansard roof. Ground floor has wide inserted shopfront each side of paired panelled doors in unfluted Ionic portico with pediment. Second floor windows have eared architraves with keystone and raised centre, on moulded sills, under cornices with frieze to dropped ends, at first floor architraves are eared, raised to segmental head with keystones bearing high relief carved heads, moulded sills on scroll brackets. Centre bay has fine cartouche surround to upper window, with very deep keystone bearing an armorial Rosewell device (rose and well), and with the date 1735; at first floor window cornice carried by Atlantes on deep pedestals, and with moulded architrave segmental head. Moulded cornices above ground floor, but not taken across middle bay, first floor, and to eaves, on bold consoles above windows, and raised in segmental open pediment over centre bay. Centre and ends are framed by plain square pilasters, with cornices broken out, and channelled pilasters to ground floor. Roof coped to left, with deep stack, and returns to hip, with wide stack to rear. Return to Kingsmead Street in eight-bays, with similar, but simplified detail. Mansard has three-light dormer, raised to full attic with three small sash. Second floor has three blind lights, two segmental-headed twelve-pane in pilasters on deep sills with brackets, and three flat segmental-headed twelve-pane, in pairs to common sills, first floor has similar arrangement, two larger units having broad architraves to scrolled feet, and with deep keystones inflected to cornice. Ground floor has two poor C20 shopfronts, and central door set to deep plain reveals. Cornices follow from front, upper cornice has scroll brackets above windows. Large stack to right, shared with No.3 Kingsmead Street (qv). Rear in rubble, with variety of small lights, both sashes and casements, mostly varied from original fenestration.
INTERIORS: Not inspected, but Green (op cit) records good panelling and other detail, and fine mahogany and oak staircase, with three turned balusters per tread, some twisted, fluted columnar newel posts and panelling to dado level. Photograph in National Monument Record of unusual plasterwork inside No.13, said to have been executed by a modeller named Sheldon who lived here: it includes antique reliefs, frames of palm fronds, heads to ceiling corners.
HISTORY: Rosewell House is listed Grade I as the outstanding example of a Baroque town house, of the sort rendered unfashionable by Wood's Palladian orthodoxy. `Nothing save ornaments without taste' was Wood's dismissive assessment. Its exuberant external decoration is unsurpassed, not only in Bath but elsewhere at this date. It marked the swan-song of a tradition of decorative masonry. A bronze plaque records that Bishop Butler (1692-1752), Bishop of Durham, lived here. SOURCES: (Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bath: London: 1948-: 134; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 119; Green M: The Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bath: Bath: 1904-: 79

Listing NGR: ST7479964769

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q68201756

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record