Of Stones, Stars, Circles, Status, Secrets, Sacredness, Mystique and Masons. Part 2

View across Bath from the Landsdowne Grove Hotel. 

See here for Part 1

During a year at Bath University I took the train journey from London to Bath on several occasions. Just before arriving at Bath the train from London passes through Brunel's  two mile long Box tunnel. Shortly after the tunnel breaks out into the open the city of Bath fills the vista, its magnificent magnolia limestone buildings climbing the steep sides of the Avon valley.

For me there was always something a little unreal about the city of Bath: The precipitous setting, the hot springs from deep under the Earth attracting sacred devotion and the relatively systematic architecture give a rather un-English feel to the city. In going through Brunel's tunnel and finding this City at the end of it, it is almost as if one has passed through some kind of wormhole into a parallel universe where the tendency of English towns to host a motley and unplanned collection of often nondescript and ugly buildings has taken an entirely different course:  I can never dispel the feeling that the city of Bath is a little otherworldly. Norwich, where I live, has a well deserved reputation as a picturesque and ancient English city with an eclectic and quaint mix of buildings from across the ages, but in comparison with Bath, it is an architectural mess!

When you've been in Bath for a while, however, you realise that it's no dream or sacred city although it might have had aspirations to be that. It is, in fact, a city based on the very worldly commercial interests of architects, developers and speculators, all of whom were very concerned about their pockets and their careers; status seeking once again is found to be an important driving force of human endeavour. Behind those impressive and elegant facades architectural compromises were made in order to service the constraints of economic exigencies and practicalities. Bath's selling point was its facades, much to the chagrin of Victorian Gothic revivalist Pugin who had no time for Georgian architecture. In his view those facades were for pseuds. For unlike Gothic architecture, we find in Georgian architecture no clear link between form and function: Those elegant pilasters and architraves, in spite of appearances, served little or no structural purpose. To Pugin they were architectural lies which prioritised style over content.

Nevertheless, I don't think many people would venture to gainsay the elegance and beauty of the Palladian style; for some reason it just seems to touch an aesthetic sweet spot in our visual cortex. I see no reason to write it off as architectural deceit: Those facades are simply two-dimensional canvasses in stone where the mason, like the painter, is free to express the artistic impulse. However,  I'm not so sure that Georgian architecture ages with grace, especially when it's made of Bath limestone, a stone which does not weather well and blackens with time. When I was in Bath in the seventies I often felt that Norwich's mishmash of unplanned building looked neater and often less run down than Bath's crumbly stained buildings. But during our recent visit to Bath we happened to stumble across the new development in the south central city, a development that captures the original impact of the Georgian style. This newly built area conveys the real breathtaking effect of freshly minted Bath-stone and the crisp unfussy lines of palladian architecture in its hey-day. From this we can see that palladianism was an expression of bright, optimistic and confident modernism, two hundred years ahead of its time. Modern architecture is meant to have straight edges, unspoiled by the distorting effects of time; it is meant to be eternally new.

Stunning new build in the city centre recreates the fine straight lines of Georgian Bath....

....the eighteenth century equivalent. 

The chief architects of Bath were John Wood and his son John Wood junior. They had such a free hand with the city that for a short while some "central planning" actually erupted in an English city. In fact rumour has it that the Woods succeeded in laying out a street plan that traces out that symbol of Masonic secrecy; namely the key. This "key" is formed from the Circus, Gay street and Queen's square; inspection of a map of Bath will show it. The guide book to the The Building of Bath museum says that one contemporary described the Circus as "the Colosseum turned inside out".  The guide goes on to say of John Wood senior:

An obsessive archaeological, he believed that long before the Romans ever came to Britain, Prince Bladud  had built for his Druid priests a circular temple similar to Stonehenge near the site of the circus. Indeed the Circus shares the same diameter as Stonehenge - according to Wood's rather distorted measurements - and the stone acorns  running round  its parapet  were a reminder of the legend  of how Prince Bladud discovered the hot springs.

The Staircase at the
Royal Crescent. 

These enlightenment men were, to their credit, curious, very curious about their world. This curiosity drove the enlightenment and was also apparent in our visit to No 1 The Royal Crescent which is open to visitors; Henry Sanford, who owned the house from 1777, was an avid collector of curiosities; that's something  I can empathise with.  They were not, however, very critical in their reading of history which they tended to take at face value: It is now believed that the druids had little to do with the construction of henges. However, Wood probably got one thing right; as we have seen: Henges look inward as does the Circus and like the Colosseum they may have hosted some kind of spectacle.

The Royal Crescent

The Royal Crescent may be based on the Masonic Moon symbol and this symbol can be used to allude to the way a subordinate reflects the solar glory of his master. That master may be some respected Masonic patriarch or may even be God himself: The Masons saw their creative efforts as that of following in the footsteps of the Divine architect, their ultimate master.

The Building of Bath guide book says of the Royal Crescent:

It was the first Crescent in Britain - what inspired its unique shape? It is possible that Wood the Younger inherited his father's theory that a crescent shaped Druid "Temple of the Moon"  once stood  near to Stonehenge, or alternatively he may have intended the shape to reflect the curving contours of the landscape. 

I think it is well-known that the Masonic movement gets a lot of mileage out of its esoteric symbolism (and probably more mileage than it deserves); a quick dip into their websites confirms this. It is certainly true that this symbolism gives to the movement the touch and feel of arcane wisdom and mystique; or at least it once did: In today's cynical and nihilistic times people may be less impressed. Nevertheless some still fear the Masonic movement because of it and believe the movement has more malign intelligence than can actually be credited to it and this has fed some fanciful conspiracy theories. I see nothing to fear in the Masonic movement myself, but I do see some very human foibles at work: The tendency to form elite secretive clubs which feed a human weakness for special status and social acceptance is a well established instinct. Secrecy and codes can also be seductive and draw people in, intrigued by the thought of discovering profound truths. The irony is that the conspiracy theorists who target the Masonic movement, have themselves become enthralled with secrecy and intrigue.

But to me the notion that the Masons are a group who remain tuned into to some kind of ancient wisdom known only to an elite, but going as far back as the henge builders and Solomon's temple, is fanciful;  let me express the opinion that just like the stone facades of Bath much of it is bluff and charade.  To me it all looks awfully like the games that boys like to play of initiating one another into secret clubs! They are, in fact, dabblers and dilettantes in fancied secrets. Some Christians are hostile to the Masons. But not me. Like John Wood & son many of them are no doubt hard-working professional people with much expertise that they contribute to society; its just that I can't take the gloss of their symbolism and their cloak of secrecy seriously. Like the henge builders they know their stuff, but the notion that they are custodians of something more esoteric and more intriguing is a myth. The best complexion I can place on the Masonic predilection for theatre and symbolism is that this symbolism is a hook to express our awe in the face of the unknowns of creation. As the saying goes: A word is a raft when the mind is at sea.

In the eighteenth century Bath was at times the grotesque epitome of style over content as Jane Austin knew and regarded with contempt. The following information board at No 1 the Royal Crescent expresses it well:

Click to enlarge. 

Quoting from this board:

Using images to control people's perceptions about your life is not new it has be done for hundreds of years; the only thing that has changed is the medium. Today we use photographs and social media, but over 250 years ago the Georgians used oil paintings, prints and busts to share their status.

Yet again we see how so much about human life revolves round social position and where apparent status is mediated via the control of appearances and the promotion of mystique. Image is as important today as it was in the Bath of the 18th century, a city of facades, a city of image. And going further back I very much suspect that Avebury henge (as we saw in Part 1) also had much to do with image, theatre and the embroidering and inflating one's profile, knowledge and power in order to impress. But let's face it: Even the human weakness for play acting has generated much beauty, art and wealth, such is the paradox of human nature and the human predicament.

...to be continued.