BUILT of glowing golden Bath stone, No 8 The Circus offers the opportunity to live in the prime position in one of the grandest compositions in all English architecture. The architect John Wood the Elder originally dreamt that his smart town mansions would look out on a “Grand Circus for the Exhibition of Sports”. Instead the central sward is today filled with a noble grove of six lofty plane trees, allowing every house an open view of this matchless reincarnation of Ancient Roman splendour.

The Circus was begun in 1754, the year Wood died. The work was taken forward by his son, John Wood the Younger, who offered William Pitt (the Elder), the First Minister, a choice of house to set the development off to a good start. Pitt was MP for Bath for 11 years until created Earl of Chatham in 1766. He chose two houses, No 7 as his office and No 8 as his home. The reasons for his choice are obvious. The front of the house enjoys morning sun while the back looks southwest with a sylvan view over Victoria Park and the green in front of the Royal Crescent.

For nearly half a century the two houses have been a nursing home. Five years ago they were acquired by Nigel Slydell, an entrepreneur who cut his teeth developing land at Emsworth harbour, near Chichester. No 7 was sold last year for £3.7 million. Now No 8 is for sale for £3 million through Savills.

The basement areas in The Circus are exceptionally large, giving each house a grand approach between cast-iron railings. The front of No 8 has been newly cleaned, revealing the exquisitely crisp detail of the three ascending orders of columns: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. The Doric frieze over the ground floor is the richest, with a constantly varied run of Classical motifs, including sword and buckler, Mercury caduceus (baton entwined with a snake), cornucopias and laurel crowns.

The interiors of the house are superbly proportioned, if a little on the plain side. To give them éclat Mr Slydell has commissioned the designer Johnny Gray to create kitchen ranges, cupboards and dressers that are as much pieces of sculpture as furniture.

The two ground-floor rooms open into each other. At the front is the dining room where the deep drawers of the sideboard-cum-dresser pull out to reveal three washing-up machines so that you can put plates and glasses in without even getting up from the table. Ingenious, yet a trifle odd for the super-smart dinner parties for which the house appears to have been designed.

The kitchen has a central slender oval island with a hob, while oven and large American fridge swing out in a matching curve from the wall. The long slow curves perfectly match the graceful bay window at the end. The use of woods is exquisite with walnut, ash, bur walnut and bur sycamore. Worktops are in French limestone and Jerusalem Gold stone. “The men love it, the wives are less sure,” says my guide. One strange detail is that the fireplace wall is completely bare apart from a marble mantel — a dead space.

The houses around The Circus are wedge-shaped, but this is hardly evident here except in the stair, which is set at a slight angle to the entrance hall, lit by a gently curving double sash on the half landing. To make the grandest exit into the large back garden, Mr Slydell has deftly made the central sash window into a door opening on to a sleek all-glass bridge across the back basement area. At night, with lights in the room below, the stainless steel rails glow enticingly.

On the first floor is a double drawing room with sliding doors that glide smoothly into the dividing wall. Here, as everywhere else in the house, the original floorboards have been exposed and polished, creating a minimalist contrast with the pale plaster walls and whitened cornices.

The second floor, with the master bedroom, brings more surprises. There is an egg-shaped bath by the window, a large walk-in clothes closet, and a wet room up half a flight of stairs overlooking the garden. Here floor and walls are all clad in buff mosaic and carefully textured black slate, a welcome change from the ubiquitous use of marble in bathrooms. At the front is a second bedroom with its own bathroom and window on The Circus. On the third floor are three more bedrooms, one with its own shower room, the others sharing.

The lower-ground floor is well lit, thanks to the large basement area. There is a games room in the vaulted front kitchen, with a further bedroom and bathroom at the back where the glass bridge allows light to stream in through the windows. The final surprise is that, even without double glazing, the cars in The Circus are virtually inaudible, though the sound is a little more evident at the top of the house.

Bath’s former conservation officer, James Elliot, says: “After the Second World War people thought they would never be able to find servants again, and the idea of flats had not yet started. So many of these glorious townhouses were taken over for institutional use.”

They are becoming townhouses once again. “Last year 27 houses in Bath sold for over £1 million, nearly twice as many as in Bristol,” says James Mackenzie, of Savills.

Eighteenth-century elegance is evidently a sound investment.

Savills: 01225 474500

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