A 1720s stone monument on Lansdown Hill above Bath, marking where the Royalist commander Sir Bevil Grenville fell in battle
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Sir Bevil Grenville’s Cornish pikemen took three attempts to storm the Parliamentarian guns near the summit of Lansdown Hill on 5 July 1643, and Grenville suffered the wound that killed him in the struggle that followed their capture. His grandson put up this monument on the spot where he fell, nearly eighty years later in 1720, a tall stone pillar in the ornate English Baroque style. Standing 7.6 metres high, it’s topped by a griffin holding a shield emblazoned with the Grenville arms, with an account of the battle carved on one side and two commemorative poems on the other. The monument stands right on the Cotswold Way, so walkers on the long-distance path pass within a few paces of it, free to stop and look whenever they’re passing. Bath itself is a short drive away.
