The Queen Anne Column

This is my very favourite place in Cirencester - I can sneak out from work in the Summer Holidays and be here, totally alone, in the surreal emptiness, within a few minutes.  In lock-down there are actually a few more people around than normal!

British Listed Buildings - Queen Anne's Monument, graded II*
At first sight Queen Anne seems to stand on her Doric column in a random meadow.  In fact
 the monument is carefully sited on an artificial plateau, designed to be viewed "axially from the mansion and diagonally from the Seven Rides".  This was achieved only by dint of  considerable earth moving including levelling the entire ground between the house and the monument.

A date of 1738 or 1741 is given.  A letter from Lord Orrery to Swift in July 1741 mentions that "Lord Bathurst is at Cirencester, erecting pillars and statues to Queen Anne". Pope recommended to Lord Bathurst that his monument to Queen Anne should take the form of an obelisk or preferably a solid pyramid 100 feet square, but it seems his advice was not heeded.

Earl Bathurst in his robes by Kneller,
National Maritime Museum

The Bathurst family had close ties to Queen Anne.  Earl Bathurst's mother, Frances Apsley, had been her Maid of Honour and was an intimate personal friend of the two princesses Mary and Anne.  His father, Sir Benjamin, who bought the Cirencester estate in 1695, was treasurer of Anne's household  and used his royal patronage to  secure lucrative posts as a governor of the East India and Royal Africa Companies. In August 1708 the Queen and her husband stayed overnight in Cirencester as guests of the young Bathhursts.  As MP for Cirencester, Allen Bathurst served the royal interest.  In 1714 he was elevated to the peerage as one of the twelve "Utrecht peers" created to secure support for the Peace: "It is related that when the twelve took their Seats, a witty Whig peer inquired "whether they would speak by their Foreman".  (Sadly, under Walpole and the Whigs, the Earl's loyalty to Anne and the Tory cause was  to cost him long years in the political wilderness.)