Today my Georgian Bath class went to Beckford's Tower, owned and operated by the Bath Preservation Trust. Amy Frost, my professor, is curator of the museum. The tower was designed by Henry Goodridge in 1825 but not completed until 1827. It's built in the neoclassical style and has a 120-foot tower. William Beckford used it as a refuge and a place to store his massive collection of art, furniture, and other rare items. He was a bit of an eccentric, involved in a lot of scandal during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was also big into Gothic architecture, novels, and imagery and saw his tower as an escape from the gossip-ridden city of Bath. Beckford was known for his construction and residence within Fonthill Abbey, a domestic building constructed to look like a Gothic abbey. Unfortunately, the tower of Fonthill toppled in the early 1820s. Now Beckford's tower is the only surviving example of Beckford's crazy architectural tastes.
One of the coolest things inside the museum was an eighteenth-century paper architectural model of Fonthill Abbey. It's said to be the oldest architectural model in England.
The back of the tower
I have a staircase fetish, just fyi. This is the helix staircase leading up to the tower. This shot is from the top of the tower looking down. The stairs are really unique because they're covered on the bottom, which was highly unusual for staircases like this in England.
Interior decoration and molding in the tower
Looking back down at the staircase
It was a long walk up.
View from the cemetery behind the tower.
Me at the tower
The front/side of the tower
Beckford's grave is situated on an island (well, more like a random bit of grass between two ha-has, steep grass hills used to keep sheep from wandering off property.). Urban legend has it that his dog is buried in the grass next to him.
