The Georgian House Attached Front Area Railings And Rear Garden Walls

The Georgian House, located at 7 Great George Street in Bristol, is a Grade II* listed building. It is one of several five- and three-bay detached houses built on the south-east side of Great George Street between 1788 and 1790 by William Paty to the individual specifications of his clients. This particular house was built for John Pinney, a sugar merchant and plantation owner.

The building is constructed in limestone ashlar with a coursed Pennant rubble basement, brick gable, and stacks supporting a slate double-pile roof. It follows a double-depth plan and is built in the Mid Georgian style, comprising three storeys with an attic, basement, and sub-basement arranged in a three-window range. The symmetrical front elevation features a rusticated ground floor rising to a plat band and cornice with parapet. The central doorway is flanked by pilasters supporting a Doric entablature and pediment, with a semi-circular arch containing a metal fanlight above a six-panel door. Ground-floor windows have large keys and six-over-six-pane sashes, with smaller proportions on the second floor. A large hipped dormer punctuates the roofline. The right-hand return contains a first-floor semicircular-arched stair light. The rear elevation is similar in character, with the rubble basement featuring segmental-arched Pennant lintels.

The interior is remarkably well-preserved. A flagged entrance hall contains a semicircular arch opening to a central stairwell, with a stone open dogleg stair fitted with wrought-iron balusters featuring curved bars and lead enrichments, supporting a wreathed and banded rail. A separate open well service stair is positioned to the right. Principal rooms to the rear display fine Adam-style fireplaces, cornices with swagged friezes, dados, and connecting arches. The north-east ground-floor room retains original fitted bureau-bookcases. Six-panel mahogany doors and panelled shutters appear throughout. A wall between the entrance hall and north-east front room was removed, probably around 1938 or 1939. The basement contains a complete range of service rooms including a range, oven, coppers, and a stone-lined plunge pool approximately 5 feet deep, 4 feet wide, and 10 feet long.

The property is accompanied by attached cast-iron front area railings and gates curved up to the door, and a detached rubble boundary wall to the south-west. It forms part of a group with other houses built at the same time by William Paty on this side of the street, including numbers 3, 23, 25, and 27, all of which are listed; the coach house of number 25 is also listed. Opposite stands the Church of St George, designed by Robert Smirke and built 1821-1823, now a concert hall.

John Pinney (1740-1818) was the original owner and occupant. From 1762 to 1783 he lived on Nevis managing several sugar plantations in the West Indies, but returned to England in 1783 and settled in Bristol. He established a business as a sugar factor in partnership with James Tobin, a former neighbour from Nevis, with the pair acting as agents and moneylenders for planters. The headquarters of this firm was based at Great George Street, and the ground-floor study, with its built-in bookcases and safe, is thought to have served as the office. The house became a focus for social and cultural exchange, with Pinney's circle including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Horatio Nelson. The substantial plunge pool commissioned for the basement reflects Pinney's personal habit of daily cold-water immersion, mentioned in a letter from 1760 when he was apprenticed to a warehouseman in London and found the practice 'of great service'. Beyond Great George Street, Pinney and his family also occupied Racedown in Dorset and Somerton Erleigh in Somerset.

Pinney's prosperity derived substantially from the management of enslaved people on his plantations. When he moved to Bristol, he brought two Black attendants: Fanny Coker and Pero, both purchased by Pinney in 1765. Fanny, whose father is thought to have been Pinney's plantation manager, was manumitted or freed in 1778 and served as maid to Pinney's wife Jane until her death in 1820. Pero, who was twelve when purchased along with his two sisters, became Pinney's valued manservant. Although he was given responsibilities beyond his formal role and engaged in money-lending on his own account in Bristol, he appears never to have been manumitted and was probably still enslaved at his death in 1798. A letter from Pinney written shortly before his own death reflects his attachment to Pero, who had served him for over thirty-two years.

On Pinney's death in 1818, the house passed to his younger son Charles, who took over the business. The house remained in the family until 1861, though it was occupied by tenants for much of the nineteenth century. In 1938 it was given to the city of Bristol by Canon R. T. Cole and opened shortly afterwards as a museum, particularly intended to display eighteenth-century furniture and art in a Georgian domestic setting. The museum has always been closely associated with John Pinney, with the Pinney family first making a loan to the house in 1939, and numerous family items remain on display.