The sun and moon at Bath | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Littlestone Jun 24, 2005 21:47:27

Did anyone catch the unscheduled <b>Unearthing Mysteries</b> prog on BBC 2 this evening?

Unfortunately I missed the first half of the prog but, for what it's worth, it was presented by Dan Cruickshank and centred on the 18th century architect John Wood.

Wood was responsible for the design of the Crescent and Circus at Bath. What was really interesting was that John Wood was strongly influenced by the Druidic and Masonic 'ideas' of the day and some of those ideas are incorporated in the Crescent and Circus architecture. Even the main dimensions for the Crescent and Circus are based on the dimensions at Stonehenge and Stanton Drew! The Crescent and the Circus are, in fact, an architectural representation of the sun and crescent moon!

Apologies if some already know all that but it was a new one on me!

danielspaniel Jun 27, 2005 12:54:27

Replying to Littlestone

Hi LS,

Glad someone else saw this. It was fascinating. I never knew this about the architecture of Bath and now I want to go back there and have a good look!

Did you see the bit about Stukeley and his friendship with the Princess of Wales, who was a member of a druid order? Wood was very influenced by Stukeley apparently.

They had a great reconstruction of Wood running around Stanton Drew trying to count the stones on a stormy night, lightning felling branches from trees and everything!

Squid Tempest Jun 27, 2005 13:19:11

Replying to Littlestone

interesting wasn't it. We were particularly taken by the "key" visible from the air, formed by the circus and the square joined by a road. We also thought that Whispering Dan had missed a trick - looking the other way (from the circus to the crescent) you can see a clear sickle (sp?) shape - which, as they said earlier in the prog - is another masonic symbol.