The highlight of Andrew Swift’s latest walk to welcome in the New Year is a National Trust property with a difference – a landscape garden in the heart of a city.
Prior Park near Bath is a delight to visit at any time of year, but on a crisp winter’s day it has a magic all its own. With the trees now bare, wider prospects are opened up, while mist rises from the lake and drifts of snowdrops line woodland paths. Prior Park may not be the largest or most monumental of England’s landscape gardens, but none is more spectacularly situated – and none owes its existence to a more extraordinary man.
Ralph Allen, who created Prior Park, was one of the 18th Century’s greatest entrepreneurs. After being appointed postmaster of Bath in 1712, he drew up proposals for a radical overhaul of the postal system and was awarded the franchise for implementing them. He soon made a small fortune which he invested in his next grand project, buying up and developing the quarries on the hills above Bath. They contained some of the finest building stone in the country, but the cost of hauling it any distance over rough roads made it prohibitively expensive. So in 1731 he built a tramway to carry it down to a wharf on the River Avon, and invested in a scheme to make the river navigable downstream to Bristol so that it could be shipped out from there.
The success of this project turned his small fortune into a large one, with which he built himself a mansion set in landscaped grounds overlooking the city. This was no mere vanity project; it was built with stone from his quarries and served as the finest possible advertisement for them. And, to rub the point home, the tramway which carried stone down to the river ran right past it. The tramway is long gone, having been converted to a road after Allen’s death, but Prior Park mansion survives as a school, while the garden surrounding it has, since being acquired by the National Trust in 1993, been restored to its former glory. It differs from other landscape gardens not only by being in the heart of a city; it also has no car park, and, while there are buses from the city centre, a far better option is to walk there. The quickest route – up the former tramway – is not that interesting, but there are several other options. The one described here heads up to Prior Park along a deep-rutted, long abandoned lane, while the return journey leads through the village of Widcombe, deep in a hidden valley, where some of the oldest buildings in Bath can be found. En route, it also reveals other aspects of Ralph Allen’s legacy, putting his mansion and its garden in context.
First things first
The best way to get to the starting point is by public transport – either to Bath Spa station or to the nearby bus station – although car parks are also available. However you choose to arrive, head to the back of the railway station and cross a footbridge over the river. Carry straight on across two sets of pedestrian lights and turn left along Widcombe’s main street – Widcombe Parade.
At the end, turn right up Prior Park Road to follow the course of Ralph Allen’s tramway. Allen also built the White Hart Inn, on the corner, and the row of cottages on the right, which housed his workforce.
At the end of the row, turn right uphill for a few metres before turning left along Prior Park Buildings, where a grand Regency terrace looks out over a millstream fed by the Widcombe Brook. At the end, as you re-join Prior Park Road, look up to your left to see the semi-circular back of Widcombe Crescent looming over the valley.
After passing the garden centre, the orchard on your right indicates that you are already on the edge of the country. Here the brook disappears under the road. Until 1927, the car dealership across the road was a mill whose wheel was powered by the brook.
The building ahead, with a semi-circular bay, was an 18th-century pleasure garden called the Bagatelle. As you carry on across the end of Lyncombe Vale, another 18th-century building comes into view – a lodge built to guard the tramway, whose course we now leave by turning right up Perrymead.
Following the old road
This is the old road, abandoned when the tramway was converted to a road after Ralph Allen’s death, and after 200m, as you turn left by the Priory, its condition deteriorates rapidly. Visitors to Bath as far back as the 16th Century complained about the steep, stony roads down into the city. Most have been transformed beyond recognition, but this lane still gives some idea what those early travellers had to contend with, and makes you realise why Ralph Allen needed to build that tramway.
After 450m, you pass under a grotto-like archway across which ran one of the drives on Allen’s estate. A few metres farther on, turn left along a footpath and carry on along a road. After 150m, turn left downhill. The gates you can see across the road at the bottom only lead to Prior Park School. For the gates to the garden, cross and turn left downhill for 100m. Leaflets, information boards and a friendly reception team make a detailed description of what you will find on entering the garden superfluous. Suffice it to say that few landscaped gardens are so photogenic, with its two keynote buildings – the mansion and the Palladian Bridge – appearing and disappearing as you wander its steep and winding paths.
All paths eventually lead down to the newly restored lake and a tea cabin, beyond which a gate opens onto a lane leading to the heart of the old village. High walls and hedges hide grand houses, until you come to the church of St Thomas à Becket, the oldest in Bath, built in the 1490s. Before turning right along Church Street, divert left for a little way to look through the gates of Widcombe Manor, whose Baroque facade is adorned with fantastic grotesques.
As you head along Church Street, you pass Widcombe Lodge, once home to the novelist Henry Fielding and his sister Sarah, who were friends of Allen. The pair of cottages a little way along on the right date from the 16th Century. Further along, the cottage with a blocked row of windows high above the street is 17th Century. At the end of Church Street, turn left down Widcombe Hill, passing Widcombe Crescent – the back of which you saw earlier – on your left.
At the bottom, the White Hart – fast approaching its 300th anniversary – is currently being refurbished. Beyond it, though, on Widcombe Parade, is a range of independent shops, pubs and cafes to tempt you to tarry a while as you head back to the starting point.
Prior Park Landscape Garden is only open at weekends until mid-February from 10am to 4pm, with last admission at 3pm; thereafter it is open daily to 5pm. For more information visit the website nationaltrust.org.uk/prior-park. Although much of the walk is on pavements, the uphill section along the old road is steep and muddy, while the downhill paths at Prior Park are also steep.
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