To 'The' or Not to 'The'

To 'The' or Not to 'The'? That is the Question

By Michael Daw

Tourists talk about it. Residents with pretensions anguish about it. Residents with fuller lives don't even think about it. The Royal Mail doesn't mind about it. Iconoclasts titter about it. The Hotel lays claim to it.

What is it that causes so many varied reactions? It is the burning well, smouldering ‑ question of whether our address should be "The Royal Crescent or just "Royal Crescent". Esoteric one may think, even pedantic (perish the thought), but an issue brought into less fuzzy focus by a new development on the other side of Bath.

To a design by the local David Brain Partnership, three houses in a curve, just off Bathwick Hill and illustrated below, are being marketed as "Combe Royal Crescent", with a very large and distinctive capital "R" to the word Royal in the agent's (Crisp Cowley) advertising.

So, might confusion arise? Taxi drivers, visitors seeking directions, even some local people may need to be informed specifically about the two Royal Crescents which now exist and invited to define which one is actually being sought. Our street signs, cast in bronze, incised in stone and emblazoned on bus banning notices, all say simply "Royal Crescent' , so no help there.

Only the Hotel has it right (if somewhat presumptively). Their switchboard operators answer calls with a cheery "The Royal Crescent' usually without mentioning the word "Hotel".

But what is historically correct? When built, as the first urban terrace in such a shape, the Bath Chronicle of 21st May 1767 announced "Tuesday last, the foundation stone was laid of the first house of the intended new building .... called the Crescent". And in a contract between John Wood the Younger and builder Michael Hemmings, conveying the ground for the building of no. 7, the land is referred to as "the Royal Crescent'.

Also in general life the prefixing of any name with "the" has come to become mark of distinction, separating the thing so prefixed from others with the same name. So, despite our centuries‑old urban and architectural pre‑eminence, perhaps the arrival in the same city of a similarly named, albeit smaller, building does call for us to confirm and proclaim our status whenever we give our address, as the one, the only, the original: "The Royal Crescent'!