New Bath Hotel

New Bath Hotel, Matlock Bath

This is a hotel dating from 1745 with extensions added in 1780-90, 1860, 1885 and 1895, plus alterations from the 20th century. The building is constructed of rubblestone, mostly rendered and whitewashed, with an ashlar wing. It has slate roofs with stone and painted stuccoed ridge and end stacks. The building comprises 3 storeys and attics, with a basement swimming pool.

The hotel is designed in Late Classical style with a large square plan and a wing to the northwest at an angle. The entrance front displays a 7-window range at first floor level, featuring 2/2 sashes in moulded stucco surrounds, some with pediments. Similar windows appear on the ground and second floors, except for a French window to the far left. The principal entrance is positioned centre right within an open Doric porch.

The front facing the old turnpike road to the right has two gables, with the centre infilled by a range containing two 2-storey canted bays. A similar 2-storey canted bay appears to the left gable, topped by a large stucco panel inscribed "The New Bath Hotel" and surmounted by an open curved pediment. The right gable features a canted bay raised over the plunge bath in the basement, with 2/2 sashes on each floor. The garden front to the right similarly displays 2/2 sashes with moulded stucco architraves. From the right end of this front projects the 3-storey wing of 1885, constructed in ashlar with carved stone window frames, mostly fitted with sashes. A large 2-storey canted bay projects from the centre of this wing.

Extending left from the main entrance front is a single-storey rubblestone range, probably dating from the 19th century and originally a stable range. Other mainly 20th-century extensions are present but of no special architectural interest.

The interior includes the plunge bath in the basement, featuring a fine ashlar stone vault with various side and end openings, all likely dating from 1745 when the bath first opened. An early to mid-19th-century staircase with thin turned balusters and curving hand-rail survives in the linking west wing to the rear. Another staircase, constructed in pine, is found in the wing of 1885, which also contains the large Arkwright Room with panelled doors and moulded architraves. These moulded architraves appear elsewhere in this wing. The hotel generally retains many original cornices and the room layout from the 19th century and earlier periods, although modern facilities have been carefully integrated.

The New Bath, as it became known, centres on the plunge bath in the basement, which was opened in May 1745 along with the hotel to its south. It utilised the warm spring water for which Matlock Bath had become well-known at the end of the 17th century. This bath is now the only surviving example of Matlock's two 18th-century baths. The original hotel consisted of the south and west parts of the present main range. The bath was incorporated into the building at the end of the 18th century when the north wing was built over it. The resulting U-plan was filled in and rationalised in the mid-19th century, with the north wing added in 1885. This complex displays its long evolution as a tourist hotel, with, at its core, a particularly unusual survival of an 18th-century bath with the natural warm spring still supplying it running strongly.