Bath in the centre of
the eastern crescent. That the original founders of Bath Street
regarded it as an important architectural feature of the city is
evident from the inscription in abbreviated Latin which was engraved
on the first stone of the street when laid:--

PRO
VRBIS DIG: ET AMP:
HAEC PON: CVRAV:
SC:
DELEGATI
A: D: MDCCXCI.
I: HORTON, PRAET:
T: BALDWIN, ARCHITECTO.

which may be read to the effect that "for the dignity and enlargement
(of the city) the delegates I. Horton, Mayor, and T. Baldwin,
architect, laid this (stone) A.D. 1791."

It is actually proposed by the new proprietors of the Grand Pump Hotel
to entirely destroy the beauty of this street by removing the
colonnaded loggia on one side of this street and constructing a new
side to the hotel two or three storeys higher, and thus to change the
whole character of the street and practically destroy it. It is a sad
pity, and we should have hoped that the city Council would have
resisted very strongly the proposal that the proprietors of the hotel
have made to their body. But we hear that the Council is lukewarm in
its opposition to the scheme, and has indeed officially approved it.
It is astonishing what city and borough councils will do, and this
Bath Council has "the discredit of having, for purely commercial
reasons, made the first move towards the destruction architecturally
of the peculiar charm of their unique and beautiful city."[42]

[42] _The Builder_, March 6, 1909.

Evesham is entirely a monastic town. It sprang up under the sheltering
walls of the famous abbey--

A pretty burgh and such as Fancy loves
For bygone grandeurs.

This abbey shared the fate of many others which we have mentioned. The
Dean of Gloucester thus muses over the "Vanished Abbey":--

"The stranger who knows nothing of its story would surely smile if
he were told that beneath the grass and daisies round him were
hidden the vast foundation storeys of one of the mightiest of our
proud mediaeval abbeys; that on the spot where he was standing were
once grouped a forest of tall columns bearing up lofty fretted
roofs; that all around once were altars all agleam with colour and
with gold; that besides the many altars were once grouped in that
sacred spot chauntries and tombs, many of them marvels of grace
and beauty, placed there in the memory of men great