She gave us a really detailed insight into the history of the Museum and Tower and the man who built it, William Beckford.
In the 18th century there was a Greek revival where buildings' designs were inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome (as opposed to the Italian Renaissance).
This building was designed in 1825 and is of Neo-Classical style. Neo-Classicism was about stripping back to the source, so stripping away from the necessary decoration.
William Beckford built this as his own personal Museum and gallery, to retreat and come up to the tower to see the view. He saw the Tower as being above man, and below nature and this is what he was drawn to.
We were given handouts with basic conservation principles and our task was to get into groups and pick a side of the building and do a conservation survey, assessing its damage and writing down the causes and what can be done to fix them.
My group were fixing on the north facing elevation. There was a lot of lichen (this is a term to describe mould/fungi that grows on buildings) due to water damage. We wrote down where there were cracks, discolouration, and the agents of decay that caused these.
The photo above shows the lichen on one of the columns.
We presented our findings to the rest of the group. Then in groups we were taken to the very top of the Tower which required wearing hard hats and taking torches as it was dark and narrow, with low overhanging beams. We were also taken down to the basement which is not open to the public.
There was also a cemetery, Lansdown Cemetry, with a view over the city of Bath.
In the afternoon, I went with a few girls to Prior Park which was a really nice landscape garden. There was a house on top of a hill, then at the base of the hill there was a lake and a Palladian Bridge (there are only 4 of these in the world). It had spectacular views over Bath, and we got Devonshire tea and had a picnic in the park. It was really hard to stop taking photos as it was so beautiful.
Palladian Bridge (above)
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