The Holburne Museum building completes one of the best views in Bath, closing Great Pulteney Street, a boulevard a thousand feet long and a hundred wide. It was once the stately Sydney Hotel, which opened to the pleasure gardens, Bath's answer to London's Vauxhall and Dublin' Ranelagh Gardens. The players in the casino could walk directly onto the grounds to music from a graceful pavilion on the upper floor. I had always admired Harcourt Masters' portico and the sober front from a distance. Only when I looked at it closely did I realise how it was marred by the effete detail with which Reginald Blomfield primped its clear articulation when he gutted (his word) the building to adapt it for the museum, at about the time of the First World War.
展开▼
