Vision
Queen Square was the first speculative development by the architect John Wood, the Elder, who later lived in a house on the square.
Wood set out to restore Bath to what he believed was its former ancient glory as one of the most important and significant cities in Britain. In 1725 he developed an ambitious plan for his home town:
| “ | I began to turn thoughts towards the improvement of the city by building. | ” |
Wood's grand plans for Bath were consistently hampered by the Corporation (council), churchmen, landowners and moneymen. Instead he approached Robert Gay, a barber surgeon from London, and the owner of the Barton Farm estate in the Manor of Walcot, outside the city walls. On these fields Wood established Bath’s architectural style, the basic principals of which were copied by all those architects who came after him.
Read more about this topic: Queen Square (Bath)
Famous quotes containing the word vision:
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities—a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces—a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)