The Holburne Museum is located in Sydney Pleasure Gardens, Bath, Somerset, England. The city’s first public art gallery, the Grade I listed building, is home to fine and decorative arts built around the collection of Sir William Holburne.
Tucked in a corner of the Sydney Pleasure Gardens behind the Holburne Museum in Bath is this little building.
Maybe it is too small to be a folly. More likely it is intentionally of its period to create an ambience in the park that echoes the grandeur of the city.
You can see the scale of the building from the cyclist to the right of it. It is a grand little building and in keeping with a grand town that knows just how grand it is.
And here is the view looking out onto Sydney Place from the front of the Holburne Museum. This street is echoed in many streets throughout the town. And in the upper town there are grand terraces in the same style.
Almost all of the buildings in the centre of Bath are in this pale creamy-buff stone. I am not sure whether it is sandstone or limestone but it has weathered well.
We were told that the stone to the west into Somerset is a grey colour and that the stone to the east into Wiltshire is this same warm colour.
Although it is in the shade, I think the stone of the little building is greyer than the surrounding buildings. Perhaps it is Somerset stone?
The big question is whether grey or creamy-buff, the fact that it is everywhere would start to grate on my nerves? I have lived in places where all the stone is the same colour. In fact Edinburgh is such a city.
But it doesn’t oppress me. Bath, on the other hand, is such a tidy little place in a narrow and steep-sided valley that I think after a while it would get to be too much.
Here is a crop from the right of the frame of the previous shot. You can see the way the names of the streets are incised into the stonework. Tamara observed how it was a sign of just how wealthy Bath was when it was being built.
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