I live in Bath, a small city (population 97,000) in Somerset. It’s ninety-seven miles and a world away from London. It sits on both sides of the river Avon in a valley of steep hills, all of which are crested by trees. I live on one of the southern hills with a view over the city. Bath Abbey is a little over a mile away. I love that I can get almost anywhere on foot. It’s a city that attracts about a million visitors a year, out-numbering those of us who live here about ten to one. Add in the students at the two universities and you get a constant flow of people looking for things to do and places to go. 

One of those places is Prior Park, an eighteenth-century landscaped garden owned by the National Trust. It takes its name from the Neo-Palladian house, built by John Wood the elder for Ralph Allen between 1730 and 1740, that sits at the top of the hill. The house was built to showcase the Bath Stone that Georgian Bath was going to be built with (Ralph Allen owned the quarries) But, it’s not the house that we go to see, it’s the gardens that sweep down the hill from the house, giving wonderful views of Bath. Allen took advice from Capability Brown and Alexander Pope on laying out the garden. He planted 55,000 trees and added ponds, a mini temple and a Palladian Bridge. 

The gardens have just reopened after major restoration work on the dams that control the flow of water downhill through the ponds, so on a sunny day last week, my wife and I crossed over to the southern hills of Bath and wandered through Prior Park Gardens.

One of the first things every visitor sees is the pond at the top of the hill. I love the way this sits partly in shadow, even on a summer’s day, giving it a glaucous, slightly spooky atmosphere. I also love that even the drainage tunnels, shown in the picture below, were turned into striking architectural features.

This time, we decided to skip the paths that loop their way down the hill through the woods and headed straight down the meadow towards the bridge. I took the photograph below a little too far down the hill to see the city clearly, but it sits just beyond the furthest line of trees.

The bridge is remarkable. For a bridge that serves only to take you from one side of the garden to the other, across a dam between the pools, it’s incredibly ornate.

The National Trust is very proud of this bridge, partly because it is one of only four Palladian bridges in Europe. It’s a Grade I listed building these days..

I love how the bridge shapes the view and the way the light plays on the stone pillars but, I can also hear Ralph Allen telling rich visitors from London, “This is built with Bath stone. See how it captures the sunshine. Bath stone is a free stone – unlike slate you can cut it in any direction – which is why it’s been used here since Roman times”.

We ended our walk sitting by the lake at the bottom of the garden. It was peaceful and beautiful. There were benches in the sun and deckchairs in the shade. Best of all, there was an open-air café serving good coffee and great flapjacks. It was a resful place to be. It felt like we were in the countryside, but the city centre was a ten-minute walk away.