Skin deep

Most of you are probably going to find this post a bit boring, but that is maybe what we need at the moment.

I have always known that the gaudy facade of Orange Grove hides a much earlier building, but I was looking at it closely the other day before I took this video. I don't know why I have not consciously noticed this before, but here is the evidence that whoever decided to improve the architecture, simply stuck on a frontage which was more to their taste and - in their opinion - more in keeping with the theatrical grandeur of Bath.

The Georgians often 'Georgianised' earlier building using this method. The gabled fronts of charming 17th century buildings were often obliterated by glueing on 18 inches of plain ashlar, but the configuration of the windows gives away the original design. The Bell Inn and the Crystal Palace pubs were given this  treatment. It was cheaper than a new build.

The Orange Grove block looks as though it was tarted-up in the 19th century to me, possibly at the same time they were tarting-up the Abbey which overshadows it. The iron gutter hopper has the date 1705 written into it. The Georgians would not have been so candid about the origins.

UPDATE: I have just read everything there is to know about the making of Orange Grove -(including the names of every trader and interested party since the mid 17th century!) by reading a truly comprehensive paper of the same name by Trevor Fawcett and Marta Inskip. I eventually got to the part where they explain that the building was re-fronted between 1893 and 1901. So I was not far out.

Here's another update from the paper. Note the formal garden in Abbey Square!

And yet another. See what remains of the two original pillars of the left-hand door of the Abbey as seen in the above map. How things change - including ground-levels.