ABSTRACT
On the northern and London side of Walcot the ground, sloping steeply upwards to the heights of Lansdown and Beacon Hill, was parcelled up into numerous small fields, each perhaps two or three acres in extent. Bath appeared to be like any other Cotswold town, an urban, perhaps urbane enclave surrounded by a simple and rustic countryside. It was the relationships of the landowners and occupiers with their trustees and their tenants as well as their relationships with building developers and working builders that were to fix the location, sequence and financing of building in Bath and, therefore, to structure the social organisation of space in the City. During the second half of the seventeenth century it was also corning to be accepted that private claims to land should outweigh either customary or common claims to it.
