In late July 2025 a field and archival visit to Derbyshire allowed direct engagement with stakeholders in the United Kingdom and close observation of the sandstones, crinoidal limestones and alabaster which are such a striking feature of architecture in this region.

Visits to National Trust properties took place at Kedleston and Lyme Park where the STONE-WORK team benefited from the knowledge and expertise of curators, surveyors and co-ordinators of regional curatorial activity. At Chatsworth House curatorial staff facilitated access to areas of the building off the visitor circuit including roof level of the north range which provided valuable access to sheltered areas of Millstone Grit Masonry. Chatsworth is built from locally quarried sandstones from the Ashover Grit, a particularly high quality building sandstone from the Millstone Grit Group. Stone was procured from Ball Cross and Whicksop Edge, outcropping above Bakewell, and in the 19th Century from Burntwood Quarry near Beeley.

Kedleston is familiar to all students of architectural history for its singular role in the genesis of Neoclassicism, Robert Adam’s garden front famously integrating a triumphal arch and pantheon-like dome, while the giant alabaster columns of the marble hall are seen to reflect Adam’s ambition to recreate the splendour of ancient Rome. However, a vital aspect of the building has been largely overlooked, namely the choice of stone with its distinctive bedding pattern that has been accentuated over time by differential weathering. The Coxbench sandstone columns of the entrance and garden fronts exhibit an undulating pattern evocative of marble veining whose weathering has produced dramatic visual effects.

Visits to disused and working quarries deepened our understanding of stone formation and workability. The famed Derbyshire fossil marble or crinoidal limestone, seen first-hand at the now abandoned Ricklow quarry, exhibits in raw form the exceptionally large crinoid fossils that quarrymen called ‘nuts and bolts’ or ‘screws’; when polished it displays a rich tapestry of Lower Carboniferous marine life, as seen in the window seats, chimneypieces, staircase and fountain at Chatsworth.

‘A picture sandstone’, as characterised by geologists, describes perfectly the markings of iron-rich ‘liesegang bands’ in the ashlar masonry of Chatsworth, panels of which are isolated for visual effect in the attic register of the 19th Century north extension at Chatsworth. Primary cross-bedding forms a similar decorative effect in the columns and masonry at Kedleston Hall.

But not all sandstones are the same and the thick beds of Ashover grit seen at Birchover quarry differ greatly from the thinner beds of sandstone found in the overlying Coal Measures. At Lyme Park elevations from successive periods display the responses of architects and masons to the building stone available to them. In this case the Milnrow Sandstone from the Lower Pennine Coal Measures Formation. The masonry courses of the north front are almost brick-like in their shallowness in contrast to the deeper ashlar courses of the later elevations by Giacomo Leoni.

    Chatsworth, Lyme Park and Kedleston are sites of enormous value to STONE-WORK’s research, not only for their illustration of distinctive lithologies but also for the wealth of archival evidence which helps us to understand the collective and interdependent activities that produced them. Drawings, building accounts, correspondence and legal proceedings illuminate those involved in procuring and working stone. Stone masons such as Benjamin Jackson and the Platt family of Disley and Rotherham and carvers such as Samuel and Henry Watson and James Gravenor emerge from the deep shadows hitherto cast by architects and patrons.

Our thanks to the curatorial staff at both the National Trust and Chatsworth House for kindly facilitating special access to these properties and for their generous engagement with our research.

From Sir Christopher Wren to Sir John Soane, Scott Tallon Walker to Grafton Architects, Portland stone has long been recognised by architects and stone masons alike for its remarkable qualities as a building stone. Varying from the rough but strong and weather-resistant nature of the roach bed, more often exploited in engineering work, the fine even-textured Whitbed, with scattered shelly fossils, most prized among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century practitioners as a dimension stone, to the base bed, or ‘best bed’ which was largely reserved for statuary work, this white-grey oolitic limestone has been extensively employed in classical architecture across Britain and Ireland

In May 2025 members of the STONE-WORK team travelled to the Dorset coast to gain a greater understanding of the geological nature of the stone, the ongoing history of its extraction and the resulting impact on its use in building.

The Portland Stone Group

The Portland Limestone Group represents a sequence of sandy limestones clays and oolitic limestones overlying the deeper marine facies of the Kimmeridge Clay. Portland Stone, on the Isle of Portland formed in a marine environment, known as a carbonate ramp, on the floor of a shallow, warm sub-tropical sea. Calcium carbonate (which is the same mineral that forms the bulk of chalk, many marbles, travertine and limescale in kettles (Hunt, 2014)) accumulations gradually built up around particles of sand or organic materials, such as shell fragments to form spheres or egg shaped ooliths, billions of which cemented together, or lithified, to form the oolitic limestone. The degree of cementation in Portland stone is such that it is sufficiently well cemented to allow it to resist weathering, but not so well cemented that it cannot be readily worked (cut and carved) by masons (Godden, 2012).

Portland stone contains fossils that were endemic to the Portland seas (i.e. Solenopora portlandica, Aptyxiella portlandica) and therefore their presence provide immediate identification and provenance of this stone. It should be noted that the facies of the ‘type’ Portland Stone Formation on the Isle of Portland is distinct from that found (and quarried) on the Isle of Purbeck (‘Purbeck-Portland Stone’), the Vale of Wardour (Chilmark and Tisbury Stone), Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

The building stones come from the Portland Stone Formation which is the upper part of the Portland Limestone Group. The lower section (Portland Sand Formation) is not worked for building stone. The upper Freestone Member is composed of the Base Bed Freestone, Curf & Little Roach, Whit Bed (Whitbed) Freestone and Roach. The Roach is overlain by the Purbeck Group ‘Caps’. The thickness of the Freestone beds varies across the Isle of Portland and the Curf is sometimes not present. The Portland Stone Formation is overlain by the basal Purbeck Group.

According to Cope (2016, 15) ‘the best freestones (stone that can be worked in any direction) are oolites with little space between individual ooliths. Microscopic examination shows that ooliths have been bored out and the borings subsequently infilled by calcite. This calcite is what gives Portland Stone its excellent weathering properties’.

The Isle of Portland, the Landscape of Quarrying

Described by Thomas Hardy as ‘the peninsula carved by Time out of a single stone’, the Isle and Royal Manor of Portland is a craggy (and often windswept) tombolo or tied Island, which projects out into the English Channel off the South Dorset coast. Connected to the mainland by Chesil beach at the north end, with Portland Bill at the southern tip of the Island, its rugged coastal landscape of cliffs and weares has been shaped by both geological processes and human interventions alike. As the very bedrock of the island, the Portland stone industry, which continues to this day, has left an indelible mark on both people and place.

Although Portland stone had been used locally since the middle-ages, and by Inigo Jones in the early 17th century, it was not exploited on a large scale until the late 17th century for the rebuilding of London following the Great Fire of 1666. The immense quantities required, most notably for the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral, meant stone was extracted (under Royal Warrant and so exempt from duties paid for the benefit of the Islanders) from the Crown quarries on the East Weare but also from common land, where Portlanders were entitled to dig and take stone for their own use. This laid the foundation of the quarrying industry which would flourish on the island for more than two centuries, but also sparked discontent among the locals over the threat to their ancient privileges and traditions. 

This large-scale exploitation continued in the 18th century, leading to much physical and social change on the island. The clearing of overburden and extraction of the stone led to the destruction of arable land, as did the building of roads to the piers. The overburden, or waste, which was also used to build these roads, was often thrown over the cliffs onto the weares below, leading, it is believed, to an increase in landslips, which are a natural geological process, and the erosion of the coastline. A major landslip in February 1696, which destroyed roads, piers and cranage for loading the stone, led to works being halted at St Paul's for over a year, while the Great Southwell Landslip of 1734 was one of the largest ever in the United Kingdom. These slips exposed fresh faces of stone, often along the natural joints and gullies in the rock, beginning the process of extraction again (Miles, 2019, 11-15).

As the older quarries in the north-east of the Island became exhausted, quarrying activities spread to the north-west and centre of the island, and later south, as far as Portland Bill, where activities continued into the 20th century, the remnants of which can still be seen today, discarded throughout the landscape.

Discarded block at Admiralty, showing marks left by plug and feathers splitting (top l.); stone tracks at Admiralty Quarry, used to support carts (top r.); Discarded blocks at King Barrow Quarry (bottom l.) and Portland Bill (bottom r.), showing kevel tooling marks.

Durdle Pier

Durdle Pier is the last remaining example of a late 17th or early 18th century shipping quay on the east side of Portland. Along with King’s Pier to the north-east, Durdle pier was the main quay from which the stone was loaded on to ships, bound for London and St Paul’s Cathedral. Referred to as ‘Dirtle key’ on Roper’s plan of 1745, later maps show tracks from various stone-working sites in East Weares converging on the site.

Today remnants of a timber loading crane, or derrick, by Galpin of Dorchester (1840-70, at least the third on the site), which was destroyed by sea in 2014, are scattered around the site. The crane had been used by fishermen to launch boats (Moyes, 2019, 52). A World War II pillbox (constructed in 1940-1) stands at the edge of a cliff south of Durdle Pier. Built of concrete and Portland stone it was camouflaged to blend in with the boulder strewn area of the Weares.[1]

Durdle Pier, remnants of a timber derrick, destroyed in 2014 and iron winch; WWII Pill Box (bottom r).

Nicodemus’s Knob and Admiralty Quarry

Nicodemus Knob is all that remains of Admiralty Quarry, which was quarried-out in the 19th century. It is not known why it was left standing, but it possibly acted as a shipping beacon. It is illustrative in exposing a succession through the upper part of the Portland Group, and is capped by a single block of the Skull Cap at the base of the Purbeck Group. The Portland Freestone Formation is almost 6m thick here, however the Whitbed is rubbly and shelly and was probably not a high-quality building stone.

King Barrow Quarry

The abandoned quarry at King Barrow, East Weare, represents some of the oldest quarries exposed on the island. Although there is a large amount of discarded block, much of the original faces are now obscured by rubble and overgrowth.

Of interest is the small quarry at the SW of the site where circular burrs of algal mounds that once surrounded the Protocupressinoxylon purbeckensis fossil trees survive on the quarry bed. The trees were preserved in the Great Dirt Bed of the Purbeck Caps, a unit which overlies the Skull Cap. Circular ‘burrs’ of algal thrombolite accumulated in the marshy ground around the tree stumps. Trees were found growing, vertically, in life position, but these large fossils were excavated and sold off to collectors. This quarry may be the origin of the 2m tall tree located at the Portland Heights Hotel.

The circular burrs of algal thrombolite, which surrounded fossil trees and Fossil tree at Portland Heights Hotel.

Tout Quarry, Nature Reserve and Sculpture Park

Tout Quarry was active in the 19th century under the ownership of the Lano Family but is now a public nature reserve and sculpture park operated by Learningstone.org (formerly the Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust). This site is much reconstructed and potentially deceptive to the casual viewer. The warren of pathways run between artificially constructed quarry faces made up of blocks that have been hoisted into place. However, the quarry preserves a number of well-preserved faces where the sequence of the Portland Freestone Formation can be observed.

A section in the ‘Anthony Gormley Quarry’ is particularly illustrative. Gormley’s relief sculpture ‘Falling’ shows the figure of a man falling head first; the figure’s head is in the Basebed, his torso is in the Curf and legs are in the Whitbed. The Roach is observed at the top of the unit. This exposure is useful to demonstrate the overall lack of well-defined bedding planes in the Portland Freestone Formation, instead the different members grade into each other. The Portland Freestone Formation is overlain by the Skull Cap, Hard Cap and Soft Cap, and their intervening Dirt Beds, of the Lower Purbeck Formations.

Roach Bed, detail, with distinctive Portland ‘screws’ (circled in left image).

There are good examples here of the transition between the Roach and underlying Whitbeds.

Lano’s Arch Viaduct, 1854 (l); discarded block with iron ties (r).

Tout Quarry also contains relics of the 19th century quarrying industry, including Lano’s Arch viaduct, which once carried a tramway. It was constructed for quarry owner. Jonathan Lano in 1854. The arch has dressings of Portland Whitbed, but it is otherwise constructed from Purbeck Caps, Cypris Freestones and a rubbly, grey variety of Roach (which outcrops nearby).

Albion Stone PLC

Entrance to Jordan’s mine, Albion Stone PLC.

The team had a very interesting visit to Albion Stone, guided by Mark Ward, Mines Manager. Opened in 2002, as the first underground mine for Portland Stone, the mine is extensive and extends under several properties (for which the company had to buy the mining rights) including St George’s Church yard and the cricket ground at Reforne, which links the Jordans and Bowers quarries.

The mine is laid out on a room-and-pillar grid system, with roadways and pillars of 6-meter dimensions. Vast piers, at least equal in size to the rock extracted, are left in place to maintain structural integrity. The grid is aligned parallel to the joint sets to ensure maximum block extraction. The blocks produced here are up to 25 tons in weight. Almost all of the material extracted is used for cladding, which is cut at the factory.

Fantini GU50 sawing machine, Albion Stone PLC.

Albion Stone uses Italian stone cutting equipment, originally designed for use in Tuscany's marble quarries, to quarry all dimension stone eliminating the need for any blasting. Stone is cut using the Fantini GU50 sawing machines which can cut a 40mm slot to a maximum depth of 1.7 m, blocks can be loosened by inserting inflatable 1m2 high tensile steel Hydro-bags to displace stone through several hundred millimetres by producing forces equivalent to many hundreds of tonnes when slowly inflated with pressurised water (Godden, 2012).

Encapsulated Resin rock-bolts as roof support (l); Tensile steel Hydro-bags (r).

Following extraction, the mine’s ceiling is bolted by means of 2.4m long, fully resin encapsulated rock bolts installed vertically into the Skull Cap and Hard Cap to reduce risk of collapse. A specialised machine can drill, install and cement rock bolts to secure the ceiling – it takes around three minutes to put in a bolt.

The mine is worked below the Purbeck group and is mostly in Whitbed but descends into Basebed where the Whitbed is ‘rubbish’. These deepest parts of the mine expose Basebed overlying the Cherty Series. Small quantities of Patch Reefs, which vary from small clusters of oysters and algae to 4m high and 8m diameter are found. Some notable examples of the use of Patch Reef in buildings are Caxton House, Westminster (Chapman Taylor Partners, 1979) and UCL Wilkins Terrace (Levitt Bernstein Architects, 2017). Excellent exposures of these strata can be observed both in situ and in extracted block stored in the mine. Also, evidence of geological structures is far more evident in the mine that observed in the abandoned quarries.

According to Mark Godden, as of 2014, approximately 36% of the surface of the Isle of Portland has been quarried and something like 12 million tonnes have been extracted. Considerable reserves remain.

Patch Reef facies in the Portland Stone Formation. Typical appearance of Patch Reef (r).

Quarrying Communities

Increased quarrying activities in the late 17th century led to social changes in this closed community, with an influx of ‘middlemen’ or agents of the Crown, brought in to oversee operations and to quash unrest among the locals, who were angered by the infringement to their ancient rights to commonage and the loss of duties on stone leaving the Island (9d. per ton, with the exception of stone for Royal use), or tonnage. One such agent was Thomas Knight (1676-1680) whose tenure coincided with a period of discontent among locals, when protesting quarrymen wrecked cranes and wharfs bringing work on St Paul’s Cathedral to a standstill, and his ability to manage the supply of stone into question. Knight died in 1680 and was replaced by local men, Thomas Wise and Thomas Gilbert (d. 1695), and later the Tuckers of Weymouth. 

In the 18th century, major works like the building of Westminster bridge saw a further increase of outsiders, both stone masons and agents into the this relatively closed community. The development of the Portland railways in the 1840s opened up transport links around the island whereas the opening of HM prison the Verne in 1849 saw more permanent change for the residents of the island.

Vernacular buildings, Wakeham and Easton.

Several villages grew up around quarrying communities, many of which employ Portland stone (including, rubble, coursed rubble and ashlar) and also the overlying Purbeck Caps in their vernacular buildings. The Cypris Freestone (Bacon Tier) is used frequently. Several cottages are adorned with large Titanites sp. Ammonites.

Portland Museum, Easton

The collections at the Portland Museum at Easton offer a window into the social history of the Island, and the importance of stone and the quarrying industry for its population, with displays of tools and geological materials and as an interesting collection of maps and images of historic stone production. There is a large example of a segment of P. purbeckensis fossil tree outside the entrance to the museum and a Titanites sp. ammonite sits over the door of one of the museum cottages.

Stone-cutting and quarrying tools, including a kevel and axe (top l); plug and feathers (bottom l), section of a circular nail saw (top r).

St George’s Church, Reforne, 1754-1766

Inspired by St Paul’s Cathedral in London, St George’s Church was designed by Thomas Gilbert, a stone-cutter and quarry agent, who had worked in Dublin in the 1730s. Built largely of roach stone, likely for economic reasons, as the church was built by subscription, with quarry owners donating stone rather than money, the condition of the masonry shows the long term viability of that bed as a building stone. Although it was considered ‘rubbish’ and often discarded as overburden, perhaps due to the rough finish, or workability, Roach is just as strong as Whitbed and the church masonry has survived with little deleterious effects. Weathering and environmental conditions on the Isle of Portland are very different to those in either London or Dublin, and here Caloplaca sp. Lichen has stained the stone a pinkish-red in places.

Roach bed Portland Stone with the distinctive ‘Portland Screw’ fossil, Aptyxiella portlandica (l) and tooling (r).

Inside there are surviving inscriptions, both to the architect Thomas Gilbert, and to John and Richard Tucker, quarry owners and surveyors, who donated £100 towards its building.

In the church yard the graves of prominent quarrying families, such as the Pearces, Stones, Attwoolls and Lanos, which span more than three centuries, show the intergenerational nature of the stone industry, and the necessity of passing often tacit skills and quarrying knowledge down through the generations.

Further Reading

• Cope, John C. W., with contributions from Malcom Butler. Geology of the Dorset Coast (Geologists’ Association Guide No. 22. The Geologists’ Association, 2016, 2nd edition).

• Douch, Robert. ‘Customs and Traditions of the Isle of Portland Dorset.’ Antiquity 23, no. 91 (1949): 140–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00020202.

• Godden, Mark. ‘Portland's Quarries and its Stone’, 2012 Portland_Stone_Document_-_7_June_12.pdf.

• Hackman, Gill. Stone to build London (Folly Books Ltd., 2014).

• Hunt, Bary James. ‘Great British Stone: Portland Limestone’,  Natural Stone Specialist (May, 2014): 34–8.

• Miles, Jane. ‘The Changing Landscape of Church Ope Cove’, Church Ope Cover project Research Group report (Portland Museum, 2019).

• Moyes, Bea. ‘Fishing Industry at Church Ope Cove Church Ope Cover project Research Group report (Portland Museum, 2019).

Notes

1 Monument record MWX1413 Dorset Council, MWX1413 - Second World War pillbox, East Weares, Portland - Dorset Heritage Explorer.

In its vastness and complexity, it belies any simple characterisation. The masonry was the work of a multitude of contractors working simultaneously yet cohesively on different parts of the building. Various levels of detail and carved enrichment work in tandem and the high quality of execution is visible in every part. We are blessed to see it. For much of its life it has been covered in a thick black grime. This has often required more than mere cleaning; generations of stonemasons and carvers have quietly conserved and often replaced eroded elements. In the crypt it is possible to see one of the original but now decommissioned Portland stone urns from the south entrance, its once crisp carved detailing now bearing the appearance of melted ice cream. The beautifully weathered Portland capitals of the lantern, high above the street, show what harsh exposure can do. Replacement is inevitably piecemeal making the process difficult to chart but it reveals an edifice ultimately resting on an intangible foundation of intergenerational craft skills.

Besides St Paul’s, Greenwich Hospital represents the most sustained use of Portland on a large scale in early modern London. The Queen’s House, in white, but not all stone, quietly sets the stately tone. How dull these long hospital ranges might have been in lesser hands. But Wren and Hawksmoor found a way to formulate the elevations into a monumental complex of unsurpassed grandeur. Paired Portland columns, a favourite structural motif of Wren, stand to attention in matching colonnades across the great court; each column assembled from three drums cut to precise dimensions to match their neighbours. Such uniformity in block size must have pushed the Portland quarrymen to their limits.

The cross-disciplinary character of STONE-WORK provides the multi-faceted lens required to explore this complex topic. On April 1st, the team visited a series of buildings in Dublin to study a range of chimneypiece types, both bespoke and commercially produced.

One example is the remarkable carved ornament of the Dining Hall chimneypiece provided by George Darley’s workshop in the early 1760s. The surviving bill shows the ‘Ionic Portland stone Chimney Piece [sic]’ cost £55 15s. 8d., including £7 10s for carving ‘a Large Festoon and 2 Flower potts’,  £2 10s for ‘2 Ionic 3 quarter Capitals’, £6 18s for ‘69 flowers and modillions’ and £8 for a 5 inch thick ‘Carlow marble tombstone laid as a hearth Stone’.[1]

Digital renders capture the skill of this high relief carving, and the sleight of hand in combining the component parts – plinths, jambs, architrave frame, Ionic half-columns and entablature, and the spectacular carved tablet and frieze – into an (almost) seamless whole.

Portland stone chimneypiece, Dining Hall, TCD, c.1765. Digital renders by Andrew Tierney.

Geologists Dr Ruth Siddall and Prof. Patrick Wyse Jackson identified the limestones and marbles employed and, in some instances, the specific quarries and beds exploited to produced desired effects. These examples included the 'half-moon' brachiopod-rich bed of the Kilkenny limestone, the Base Bed and Whitbed facies of Portland Stone, and the brecciated and foliated yellow marble from Montarrenti near Siena with its distinctive texture, which was so prized by wealthy clients in the period.

This Kilkenny marble lithology is frequently used for chimneypieces as is the fossil-free variety. Technically this is not a true metamorphic marble but is a limestone that can take a high polish.

Siena marble has a distinctive but variable texture, ranging from predominantly homogeneous, yellow-coloured marbles (the colour is imparted by yellow iron oxide hydroxide minerals) with dark purple, manganese oxide-rich veins, to highly brecciated varieties where angular fragments of yellow marble are surrounded by a dark purple matrix. These latter varieties are often called Brocatello di Siena. The stone was quarried at Montarrenti close to the village of Sovicille near Siena, Tuscany, on land owned by the Convent of Montarrenti and the stone is therefore sometimes referred to as Convent Marble.

Assembling a history of chimneypiece production in the period aims to demonstrate the interdependence of quarrying, trade, masonry, architecture and social representation in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland.

[1] TCD MUN P/2/140, fol. 19, George Darley, bill for hewn stonework in the ‘New Hall’, 1760s, cited in  McParland, Edward. ‘TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN-II.’ Country Life (Archive: 1901 - 2005), May 13, 1976, 1244.

Members of the STONE-WORK team visited Kings Weston, Bristol on the 26 July 2024. The house, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and built between 1712 –19 employs local Kingsweston Stone in the ashlar walling on all four facades.

Kingsweston Stone or Penpole Stone is a member of the Dolomotic conglomerate. According to the Historic England guide to ‘Bristol, Bath and Surrounding Areas, Building Stones of England’:

The occurrence of Penpole Stone is confined to the Kingsweston area of Shirehampton, Bristol. It is an attractive, non-conglomeratic, fine-grained variety of dolomitic conglomerate, which is yellowish in colour and tinged pink. It is a hard resistant stone, and its fine grain size means it can be cut into fine ashlar blocks.[1]

Penpole Stone, which was quarried at Penpole wood, on the north side of the park at Kings Weston varies much in terms of colour, ranging from light yellow to ochre with orange to pinkish-red marbling in places. The stone also varies in terms of texture from a conglomerate composed of more-or-less equally sized pebbles to a cross-bedded, finer grained, more sandy variety, with fewer and smaller pebbles. Although some replacement patching is evident the stonework is in good repair.

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 Due to its hard resistant nature Penpole Stone was not suitable for the carved detail and a lighter fine-grained stone, possibly Dundry Stone, from south Bristol, was employed in the capitals, entablature and pediment.[2]

[1] Historic England. ‘Bristol, Bath and Surrounding Area. Building Stones of England’. Swindon: Historic England, 2023, 19.

[2] https://www.kwag.org.uk/tag/sir-john-vanbrugh/

Members of the STONE-WORK team visited Bristol on 25 July 2024 to meet representatives from Bristol City Council who kindly gave us a tour of the Bristol Corn Exchange of 1741-3 by John Wood the Elder of Bath. The Exchange is one of the finest surviving examples of the use of Bath stone and has carved ornament by local builder and stone carver Thomas Paty. We were keen to get a sense of the extent of restoration that had been carried out and the ways the stone detailing had been worked around the facades.

The lavishly enriched north elevation, overlooking Corn Street, has a rusticated ground floor of v-jointed ashlar. A giant Corinthian order articulates the first floor, the centre emphasised by three-quarter engaged columns under a pediment and reduced to pilasters in the outer bays. A jubilant chain of festoons runs between the capitals. Squared Corinthian pilaster jambs frame the first-floor windows of all eleven bays, which have alternating triangular and segmental pediments. In his account of the building published in 1743, Wood referred to these as ‘rich Tabernacles’. There have been various phases of conservation on the front, but the age of the building can still be appreciated in the much-eroded stonework along the side elevations that face onto All Saints Lane and Exchange Avenue to the east and west.

Royal Fort House sits a top the most prominent vantage point of Bristol, a former residence by local architect James Bridges and builder/carver Thomas Paty for banker Thomas Tyndall in 1761. The entrance front is very restrained, with the smooth finished closely jointed ashlar so familiar in eighteenth-century Bath. The major elaboration is on the pedimented south front overlooking the city, where the ground floor has a rusticated arcade in the advanced central three bays. The windows of the upper floors have shouldered architraves, those on the first floor pedimented.

The tympanum of the pediment is carved with a coat-of-arms. The east elevation, defined by its three-storey canted centre, has curiously squat doorcases in the outer bays with highly enriched carving.

Andrew Tierney

Much more eccentric is Rosewell House, c. 1735 , 14 Kingsmead Square, a veritable shopwindow of architectural devices and motifs, leaning towards the Rococo in its flamboyant central window, the surrounding architrave peeled back like the scrolled edges of a cartouche.

Rosewell House, c. 1735, 14 Kingsmead Square, Bath

At General Wade’s House, c. 1720, 14 Abbey Churchyard, we get to see how Bath stone has performed over the centuries, its light-touch conservation leaving the weathered elements of its giant Ionic pilasters in situ. Few Bath stone facades retain so lived-in a character and despite the erosion there is still much to enjoy in the bolection window architraves and ragged carved festoons.

General Wolfe’s House, c. 1720 at 5 Trim St, though less elaborate a facade, provides a similarly well-conserved example of early eighteenth-century Bath stonework. There have been a number of modest interventions to prevent the wholesale replacement of key elements, but on the building reflects its three hundred years, most notably in the worn-down Corinthian pilaster capital flanking the left side of the central window. It is possible of course that some of the weathered stonework here is but the remnant of earlier restorations. What is most noticeable is the fact that stone weathers variably according to its position on the facade and its degree of exposure to the elements.

Andrew Tierney