The Holburne Museum

The Holburne Museum

This building on Sydney Place was designed as a hotel by Thomas Baldwin in 1794, though its design was modified during construction by Charles Harcourt Masters after Baldwin's bankruptcy in 1793. An attic storey was added in 1836 by John Pinch the Younger. The building underwent major alterations during its conversion to a museum by Sir Reginald Blomfield between 1913 and 1915.

The museum is constructed of limestone ashlar with a hipped slate roof. It rises three storeys with an attic storey and cellar, presenting a symmetrical five-bay front. The rusticated ground floor features a central three-arched loggia set forward and carrying a three-bay prostyle Corinthian portico that fronts the first floor. The loggia contains a central arched doorway flanked by three over six sash windows, with two six over six sashes flanking the loggia itself.

The very tall first floor was created by Blomfield's conversion of the original two floors into one. It displays tall nine over nine sashes set in moulded architraves with pediments carried on consoles. The central window has French doors opening onto a balcony with wrought iron railings enriched with lyre ornaments set between the columns. Corinthian pilasters articulate the first floor front behind the columns, while the upper part is decorated with shallow relief panels marking the former position of the original square windows. Those over the first and fifth bays are framed oval medallions with husk drops, while those over the second and fourth bays are square tablets with feet and guttae. A plain frieze and deep modillion cornice runs continuously around all sides of the building. The central pediment projects upwards into the attic storey of 1836, flanked by three over three sashes in architraves that reproduce the pattern of windows formerly on the floor below. A moulded parapet with urns at the corners and a ramped up centre piece, with blind sections of balustrade at each side, completes the front elevation.

The front elevation is flanked on each side by four-bay Doric screens with a balustraded parapet, additions by Blomfield that replaced the original rusticated continuations of the ground floor with paired window openings.

The rear elevation dates from Blomfield's 1913 to 1915 campaign. It replaced the original arrangement of a projecting semi-circular loggia with an orchestra platform above with a more austere elevation that turns its back on Sydney Gardens. Blomfield's rear elevation consists of a slightly projecting central section with tripartite windows to the upper floors set within an arched recess, flanked by two-bay continuations with bull's eye windows at upper floor level. The low ground floor is faced in channelled rustication with small window openings, and an urn-topped parapet conceals the attic.

The interior was comprehensively remodelled by Blomfield during the conversion to a museum and art gallery. The original layout comprised a curator's flat and Committee Room on the ground floor with display galleries above; the ground floor has since been adapted for gallery and shop use. An open stone staircase rises the full height of the building. A top-lit picture gallery on the upper floor was built with three rooflights in place of Blomfield's proposed dome.

The building was originally constructed as the Sydney Hotel or Tavern and was intended as the centrepiece of Baldwin's Great Pulteney Street development. It became an integral part of the pleasure grounds at Sydney Gardens. It was subsequently used as a therapeutic centre for patients, and the future Napoleon III numbered among those treated here. Around 1850 the site was considered for demolition to provide a new location for the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, but the ground landlord rejected this scheme. From 1853 until 1880 it was used as the Bath Proprietary College. Bath City Council acquired it along with Sydney Gardens to provide a home for the collections of Sir William Holburne. It was sold in 1912 to the Holburne Trustees for £2,650. Five times this amount was spent on the major remodelling of the building; Blomfield's design was shown at the Royal Academy in 1911. The museum opened in 1916. Blomfield's enrichment of the principal front in a Louis XVI style emphasises the Neo-classical monumentality of the Great Pulteney Street layout, of which this building forms the north-eastern terminal.