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Question

What can you tell me about the history of the rotunda in the former Museum in St Ann Street, Salisbury, now St Ann's Place?

Question asked on

04 July 2011

Answer

The Rotunda was built in about 1812, as the circular dining room, 29.5 feet in diameter, of a large town house which was mostly demolished in the early 1860s to make way for the Salisbury and South Wilts Museum. The rotunda was retained to form a gallery for the Museum's ceramics collection, and has thus survived a rebuilding of the original property and two changes of use. The Department of the Environment Listing graded the building as II*, and refers to the domed ceiling having a coffered soffit, with the walls being articulated (i.e. divided up) by pilasters, which are like low-relief column profiles standing out from the wall, and “elaborate plaster enrichment”. The Royal Commission volume on Salisbury includes a photograph of this plaster-work, showing a Corinthian-style capital to one of the pilasters and the decoration of vine-leaves and bunches of grapes. One of the original tall mahogany doors, 4” thick, survives.

As for the history of the building, the Listing description states that the plaster-work was carried out by Italian craftsmen who had lived and worked in Salisbury for several generations, while an article in the Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine adds that the rotunda was built by Colonel Baker on a wager with two other prominent Salisburians to build the most beautiful dining room in which to entertain friends. Colonel Baker's house, demolished to make way for the museum, is illustrated in a photogrraphic frontispiece to Frank Stevens' booklet about the museum.

Bibliography

Department of the Environment: List of buildings of special architectural or historic interest: city of New Sarum (Salisbury). Rev. ed. (1980), p.214, ‘Nos 40 and 42 St Ann Street’.

Robertson, D.H.: “A history of no. 11, The Close, Salisbury” (in Wiltshire archaeological and natural history magazine, vol. 52, no. 189 (Dec. 1948), pp. 312-13.

Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England: Ancient and historical monuments in the city of Salisbury, vol. 1. (HMSO, 1980), p. 124b, item 299, and plate 95.

Stevens, F.: The Salisbury museums, 1861-1947: a record of eighty-six years of progress. 2nd ed. (Salisbury: Bennett Bros, 1954), f.p. 3.