Sydney Gardens

Sydney Gardens is a public park in Bath (Somerset, UK). The facility has the floor plan of an elongated hexagon. It is intersected by a railway line and a navigable channel.

History

The east of the city center, the four -acre park has two development sections. The transformation of a pleasure garden ( amusement park ) of the early 19th century into a public park changed the character of the garden fundamentally.

First phase

Sydney Gardens was built in the period 1790-1795 according to the plans of architect Thomas Baldwin and completed by Charles Harcourt Masters. Was modeled on the New Spring Gardens ( Vauxhall Gardens ) in London. The largest structure of the garden, the Sydney Hotel, was built in 1794.

Already in 1810, the park learned through the construction of the Kennet and Avon Channel a change since the waterway was led through the eastern part of the plant and an incision made ​​. The division of the garden area in 1840, reinforced by the construction of a double-track railway vollspurigen, a section of the Great Western Railway, for a deep route was excavated.

The operation of the amusement park was in 1891 after the lease expires to an end.

2nd phase

1908 purchased by the City the land and made it in 1913 to the general public. The terrain cuts for channel and railroad remained unchanged.

The hotel building was purchased in the same year of a foundation that the Holburne Museum of Art opened in 1916. The park has the character of a landscape garden today.

Facilities and Structures

Apart from the Sydney hotel exists the temple of Minerva, a building with tetrastylem portico, fluted columns and a triangular pediment, which in 1911 became the site of the Crystal Palace relocated here. The maze was originally present the construction of the railway in the way, as are a designed as a mock architectural lock and an equipped with mechanical moving figures rural scenery no longer exists.

There are four pedestrian bridges, two lead over the railway line, the larger one was built after the plan by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and two other lead across the channel, which in turn leaves the garden to the north and south by two short tunnels.

At the time of operation as an amusement park in particular the railway line may have been considered less than ( Zer ) disorder, rather than another, interesting, particularly given the visual axis was not affected by the park due to the lowering of the track. Similar integrations of railways originated in the 19th century about the Parc des Buttes -Chaumont (Paris) and in Türkenschanzpark (Vienna).

Gallery

The railway line

Channel tunnel portal