Crew's Hole Garden Building

Crew's Hole Garden Building is a mid-18th-century garden building, probably built as a bath house, constructed in pennant rubble and white rendered brick with copper-slag block dressings.

The building has a circular plan with an underground chamber set into the hillside beneath a domed roof. The ornamental south façade, which faces out over the terraced garden below, features a central lancet doorway flanked by pilasters rusticated with slag blocks. Blind oculi are positioned to each side of the doorway, with lower pilasters at the margins. Above the doorway sits a blind oculus set into a square panel, topped by a ramped parapet. Tall retaining walls rise to either side.

Internally, a small porch with niches on either side leads into an underground octagonal chamber. This contains a shallow circular basin that was formerly fed by water entering through a deep niche at the far end. The chamber is lit by four brick-lined circular openings piercing the ceiling, and has shallow niches set into its sides.

The building stands at the far end of Crew's Hole Garden, a formal terraced garden also created in the mid-18th century, for which this structure served as a focal point. The garden, now much overgrown with remnants of paths visible, once commanded extensive historic views over the Avon Valley, though these are now mostly obscured by trees. On the hillside to the north-west of the bath house are the remains of an oval stone-revetted water basin measuring approximately 4 by 3 metres, possibly the former cistern that fed the basin inside the bath house, or alternatively an outdoor plunge pool.

The building was commissioned in the mid-18th century by William King, proprietor of the adjacent glassworks from 1752 until his death in 1777. His house was attached to the works, and he laid out the terraced garden on the steep bank of the River Avon behind it. The garden building and its history are very similar to those at Warmley House, now the Kingswood Heritage Museum in Warmley, Bristol.

After King's death, the glassworks became disused and his house and garden were let to a local family. The writer Elizabeth Holmes (1804–1843) described the house and its overgrown hanging gardens in her collection of essays published in 1830. By 1883 the glassworks had been removed and replaced with the Bristol Fireclay Works, which operated until 1912. The house survived until at least 1902, according to Ordnance Survey maps of that date, but no longer remains. Most of the Fireclay Works were removed during the 20th century, though some of its fabric may be incorporated within the current warehouse and factory building on the site. In the late 20th century the terraced garden was used as allotments. The site is now in split ownership, with the bath house standing in a separate private garden.