Adam’s schemes for the New Town at Bath were not executed. See scheme notes.

Of Adam’s two elevations of the new town from 1782 (Adam volume 10/81-82) Rowan wrote the following:

‘This softly drawn pencil elevation preserves the early workings for a grandiose proposal which dates from 1782. Adam here attempts to organise the whole of the east bank of the Avon as a pair of long, three-storey terraces overlooking the river and set on a succession of high arcaded basements. The terraces include nine large houses, adding up to a total of 29 bays, facing the new town, and backing on a quay to be formed along the river. Tall classical archways, flanked by paired Tuscan columns, are set as the centrepieces of quadrant walls with single-bay symmetrical lodges that link the terraces to the eastern end of Pulteney Bridge which here appears as a section with the normal level and flood level of the Avon marked on it. A similar drawing (Adam volume 10/82) records the same scheme looking in the opposite direction. The difference in level between the top of the bridge and the two archways leading to the quays would have involved an impractical amount of earth movement and had the effect of hiding the ground floor of the fronts of the houses from view. It is characteristic of Adam’s way of working that the single-bay lodges in this drawing are sometimes square with pyramid roofs, and elsewhere octagonal. The screen walls treated as archways and the general sense of assembling architectural elements for effect rather than use recall Adam’s management of the ancillary buildings at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, where he was working about this time.’

Group

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