Note (return) — Re-printed from the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archæological Society. Vol. VIII., part I.
Reading edition
I have prepared a sketch section of the bath (which I hope to communicate on a future occasion), transversely and a part longitudinally, in order that a description may the more readily be understood, adopting, in my restoration, the established rules of proportion of Classical architecture, which may, more or less, have been strictly adhered to when the baths were built; indeed, in the best specimens of Roman work a licence was given to the architect as to detail and proportion, that was refused him on the Classical revival. The pilasters of these baths spring, as I have said before, from an Attic base, of somewhat coarse proportions, 14in. high.23 The attached pilasters that supported the arcade that was carried longitudinally along the bath are without a base; they must have been, within a few inches, more or less, not lower than 10ft. in height, including the impost moulding, of which there are fragments. The arches springing from them would be about 14ft. wide. I have not been able to find any fragments of the archivolt. The pilasters that supported the arches which crossed the schola have bases similar to the larger pilasters. I can hardly speak positively of their elevation or that of the arches, but I am inclined to think the height of the impost moulding was raised, so that the arch, although a smaller span, was the same in height as the longitudinal arches.