Goodridge Plans
Downside has a huge quantity of architectural drawings and plans relating to both buildings which were erected and those which remain 'unexecuted.' Found recently is a plan which falls into the latter category, a design for a proposed gate lodge here at Downside by Henry Goodridge.
Goodridge was a young architect in 1817 when Dom Augustine Baines arrived from Yorkshire as the new priest in charge of the Bath Mission. Baines immediately set about renovating the Catholic chapel in Old Orchard Street, which had been the Old Theatre Royal and is now the Freemason's Lodge. To do this, he employed Goodridge to build a small private chapel and cut new windows in the walls.
Goodridge would eventually go on to create a number of well known Bath buildings including the Corridor and Beckford's Tower at Lansdown. He also designed the chapel and an adjacent dormitory here at Downside in 1823. The chapel was one of the earliest neo-Gothic buildings in the country at the time, and still stands today next to the Old House and forms part of the quad.
Sadly, this entrance lodge never made it past the planning stage.