Bath Spa Hotel

BATH SPA HOTEL

A detached house in its own grounds on the south side of North Road, Bath. Originally called Vellore, it was built in 1835 for Colonel (later General) Augustus Andrews, possibly by John Pinch the Younger. The building comprises two rectangular blocks connected by a colonnade. A block to the right was constructed in 1835, with a matching block to the left (north) and the colonnade added in 1878.

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION

The building is constructed of limestone ashlar with slate roofs throughout.

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER

The original block presents two storeys with a full range of refined Classical detailing. A moulded lintel frieze and ground floor platband continue across the colonnade and the left-hand block, creating visual cohesion.

The first floor features paired Tuscan pilasters to the quoins, with moulded eared architraves, panelled aprons and cornices on consoles serving two- and four-pane sash windows. Windows to the sides are accompanied by stone balconies set on cast iron brackets. Stone piers, pedimented to each facet, carry articulating railings with diagonal cross bars and anthemion motifs.

The ground floor has wide banded pilasters to the quoins and to a projecting central range. Tuscan pilaster-mullions and entablatures frame two- and four-pane tripartite windows flanking an enclosed porch. The porch features paired fluted Doric columns with twentieth-century glazing to the rear. Above the porch, a deeper first-floor balcony mirrors the design of the side balconies.

The parapet of the central range is articulated by a panel between paired piers, carrying a carved crest at its centre. The first floor of the left return contains five windows with similar surrounds to those at the front and a continuous balcony of the same type. The ground floor of this elevation displays banded rustication with French windows to the centre and left, while the right return adjoins a twentieth-century block.

The left-hand block of 1878 features a dentil cornice supporting a pediment over the central range. Half-glazed double doors with a large overlight sit above a stone cornice. The right return has tripartite windows without balcony.

The two-storey eight-bay colonnade (now glazed in) displays fluted Doric columns below windows with eared architraves, cornices and panelled aprons articulated by pilasters.

INTERIOR

Although not inspected in detail, the entrance hall is noted as possessing a dentil cornice with key-pattern frieze and a Soanian dome-vaulted ceiling with roundels to the segmental tympana.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

General Andrews had served in the Indian Army. Upon his retirement to Bath, he created an elaborate villa garden with an outstanding collection of plants. A notable conservatory, now demolished, housed approximately 2,000 specimens. The 1858 sale notice praised the "consumable taste and judgment" of the late owner, who spent over £1,000 on a tufa grotto as well as on a parterre, summerhouses, terraces and other garden features. The property exemplifies an Italianate villa set within an unusually elaborate landscape setting.

The building sold in 1858 for £4,950 to the Reverend C. Kemble, who was responsible for the restoration of Bath Abbey between 1864 and 1874. In 1878, the property was extended and became Bath College, a boys' school. During the final decade of the nineteenth century, the colonnade, corridor above and a chapel were constructed. The school closed in 1909. In 1912 the building became the Bath Hydropathic Company hotel. It was requisitioned by the War Department in 1939 and served as temporary residence for Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia whilst in exile, with the emperor and his entourage occupying the Master's House. The building reopened as a hotel in 1949 for eighteen months before being sold to the South West Regional Hospital Board for £125,000, when it became a nurses home.