Sham Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

On the ridge overlooking Bath to the east, Sham Castle offers from afar the image of a small medieval fortress: round towers, battlements, a pointed-arched gateway. Up close, the illusion fades: it is nothing more than a screen wall without depth, a stage set planted on the hill to be seen from the city. The structure was erected in 1762 by Richard James, master mason to Ralph Allen, postal entrepreneur and owner of the Bath stone quarries, in order to "improve the prospect" from his town house. The design is sometimes linked to the amateur architect Sanderson Miller, a specialist in sham ruins, who may have conceived it around 1755; the attribution remains a hypothesis. Two three-storey circular turrets frame the central arch, extended on either side by a wall ending in a square tower. Its blind windows and arrow slits light nothing. Listed at Grade II*, the folly is freely accessible along the paths of the Bath Skyline, and its night-time illumination makes it one of the familiar landmarks of the Bath landscape.