BUILDING WITH BATH STONE

The honey-coloured stone that makes up the Royal Crescent is known as ‘Bath stone’. In the Jurassic Period, which ran from 201 to 145 million years ago, the land that Bath sits on was underwater. As calcium carbonate grains moved across the seafloor, they combined with the inorganic mineral lime. Sediment continued to fall in layers, putting pressure on the rock and producing limestone.

This made the perfect building material for the Royal Crescent and many other buildings in Bath, because it’s a freestone: it formed from tiny grains of minerals and rock, so the stone can be cut easily in any direction without it breaking into distinct layers like other rocks.

Architect John Wood worked with entrepreneur Ralph Allen to source and utilise the stone from Combe Down, on the outskirts of Bath. This is where large amounts of Bath stone was extracted during the Georgian era. Allen owned these quarries and built a tramway to transport the stone to the crescent.

The majority of Georgian buildings in Bath are made from the same stone