Arranged as a crescent, this building has a clear view over central Bath, being sited on Lansdown Hill near to but higher than the Royal Crescent.
Lansdown Cricket Club, founded in 1825 and the oldest club in Somerset, originally played at a ground called "Cricket Down" next to the original racecourse on the top of Lansdown Hill and close to Beckford's Tower (the current Bath Racecourse is about a mile to the west); later the club moved into Bath at the Sydenham Field, and when that was built over by the Midland Railway in 1869 it moved to its current ground at Combe Park, which is in Lower Weston.
The eccentric William Thomas Beckford was originally buried here, but moved once its former retreat of Lansdown Tower was converted into Lansdown Cemetery (which was sold after his death and when it appeared that the buyer wanted to turn it into a pub and pleasure garden, Beckford’s daughter bought it back and presented it to the Rector of Walcot as a cemetery.) “The best monuments are slightly neo-Grecian with canopied tops, dating from the 1840s.
Waller retired to a strong position on Lansdown Hill, northwest of Bath while the main Royalist force moved north through Batheaston to Marshfield.
Streams from a number of springs issuing from the southern end of the Cotswold Hills at Lansdown, Toghill and Cold Ashton in South Gloucestershire converge at Ashcombe Farm near Langridge and the Lam Brook then runs in a generally southerly direction past Ashcombe House and the villages of Upper Swainswick and Lower Swainswick.
Stephen Philip Lansdown (born 30 August 1952) is co-founder with Peter Hargreaves of UK financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown and majority shareholder of Bristol Rugby and Bristol City Football Club.