The Circus, Bath

About this place

The diameter of this ring of stone is, give or take a few feet, that of Stonehenge's outer earthwork, and that is no accident. John Wood the Elder, the architect who gave Georgian Bath its shape, was convinced that ancient Britain had inherited a sacred geometry, so in 1754 he laid out a complete circle of thirty houses split into three identical curved terraces, roughly 97 metres across, and then died less than three months after the first stone was laid. His son of the same name finished it in 1768. The result was the first residential circle in Britain and a square unlike almost any other: no corners, no dominant centrepiece, just a circle closing in on itself and broken only by three narrow entrances. What rewards looking up is the facades. The three storeys carry the three classical orders stacked bottom to top, Doric then Ionic then Corinthian, the Colosseum in Rome turned inside out. Between the ground and first floors runs a carved frieze of 525 small emblems, serpents, anchors, scientific instruments and Masonic devices, which almost nobody notices unless they stop deliberately. Along the parapet sits a row of stone acorns, a nod to the legend of Bath's founding. The thing to know before you arrive: every house is a private home, there is nothing to enter and no ticket desk, and the ring is a public street open around the clock. So this is a short stop, ten to fifteen minutes, and the whole value lies in the standing and the photographing. The light is best early in the morning before Bath fills up, or at dusk when the honey-coloured stone turns to gold. The lawn in the middle is shaded by five enormous plane trees believed to have been planted around 1820, an architectural irony since Wood never meant anything to obscure his facades, but in summer they are the loveliest thing here. In July and August tour groups pile in, yet the place never gets crowded in the sense that matters: there are no queues and no time slots. In the wet winter the stop is shorter still, though damp stone and bare branches make for quieter pictures. Practically: The Circus is a two-minute walk from the Royal Crescent along Brock Street, and fifteen to twenty minutes uphill from Bath Spa station via Gay Street, a genuine climb with a pushchair but on proper pavements. The nearest public car park is Charlotte Street, a few minutes' walk away; the bays in the ring itself are residents-only. Fold it into a single route, The Circus, then the Royal Crescent, then down to the Roman Baths, and you have the best morning Bath offers without buying a single ticket.