Now let us consider how some of Wood’s observations on the two ancient monuments are brought to bear on his design for his final emblematic piece in Bath, the King’s Circus.17At the level of iconography, the most obvious Druidical reference is the circle of acorns which adorn the pediment of the circus – suit-able for the ‘priests of the oak’.
There are two points relating to the orientation of the space and its points of entry. First, Stonehenge and the Circus are both exactly aligned with the rising sun at the summer solstice so that you would enter Stonehenge from the grand axis and the Circus from the direction of the London Road with the rising sun at the solstice behind you (Figure 14.7). Second, the house on axis with this entry point into the Circus, No 6 is the only house to have its door in the centre. As we have seen above, Wood records the number six as an emblem of the Druids’ practice of starting of their new age, new year, new month on the sixth day of the new moon.
Then there is the possibility of reading the number of houses in the Circus as lunar references. At first glance there seem to be thirty houses in the Circus, Nos 1 and 30 flank the entry into the space from Gay Street to the south.
On closer inspection, while there are thirty house numbers, there are actually only twenty-nine front doors which open onto the space. The house which would bear the address No. 19, King’s Circus, opens onto Bennet Street. So there are either twenty-nine or thirty houses on the Circus, depending on how you look at it. Referring back to Wood’s interpretation of Stonehenge, the thirty standing stones of the outer ring and the twenty-nine stones of the inner ring relate to the days of alternate lunar months. This might all seem slightly strained,
Jo Odgers
The emblematic city
14.7
Plans of Stonehenge and the King’s Circus, Bath as they stand today drawn to the same scale
but I believe the reasoning to be absolutely consistent with Wood’s interpreta-tive method in which the minutiae of numbering and grouping elements and their subsequent emblematic reading is essential. His method hovers between the certainty of absolute measurement and the ambiguity of multiple possible readings. It is worth noting that in his interpretation of Stantondrue, Wood has eighty-one ‘cells’ for the college of Druid priests set between the eighty-one standing stones representing the ‘earth’ circle.18
Finally we must address the question of size, and comparative measurement. It has been noted that the diameter of the Circus corresponds almost exactly to the diameter of the outer circle at Stonehenge and also to the largest circle at Stantondrue.19Wood was interested not just in proportion but in the actual size of the objects of his studies. He devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to a comparative study of the units of measurement, his ulti-mate aim being to establish accurately the size of the Jewish yard, a prerequi-site of achieving an accurate reconstruction of the ultimate origin of true architecture in the biblical Jewish precedents of the Ark, tabernacle and temple.
His published version of the Origin of Building devotes a full eight pages to the subject. This need to establish a firm unit of measurement is very similar to Wood’s search for a universal chronology. If history needs a chronology, then surveying, architecture and antiquarian studies need a standard universal unit of measurement. Having established the matter of comparative measurement to his satisfaction, Wood is able to observe that the circumference of the circle of the earth at Stantondrue, and thus the circumference of the King’s Circus, is 365 Jewish yards and thus ‘was made so as to express the days of the Solar year ‘.20 He observes that Stonehenge is a temple devoted to the Sun and Moon, but principally to the Moon. The same could be said of the King’s Circus.21
In the Description of Bath, Wood identifies local sites quite specifi-cally as Druid monuments, as for example the identification of Stantondrue as Stamford University. There are many such examples. The hill of Lansdown, the site of the King’s Circus and Royal Crescent, Wood sees as the Mons Badonca, or mount of Onca, the Persian goddess of the Moon. He not only conflates Bladud with the Persian magus Abaris but identifies the Druid religion with what he calls the Persian magian religion, the Druids in other words were magi. The Mons Badonca he imagines as the vantage point from where the Druids would watch for the rise of the new moon. The orientation of the circus, its actual dimension, the number of houses, its location on the hill dedicated to the Moon goddess all point to Wood’s intention that it should be read as an emblem of ancient Druid/magical wisdom and learning. This does not, however, eliminate other possible readings, such as an embodiment of Jewish architectural princi-ples or an interpretation of a Vitruvian theatre, both of which are also present, as has been pointed out by other commentators.22 All of these readings are
Jo Odgers
encompassed by implication in the same tradition, the tradition of the ancient wisdom or pristine knowledge.