The Secret Life of The Gainsborough
The Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel has enjoyed many other lives and functions. In this month’s Musing, Dr Moira Rudolf (who will be at the Gainsborough Bath Spa as part of our Jane Austen 250th celebrations later this year), delves into the former incarnations of this storied building.
Bath has been revered for its health-giving thermal waters for over 2,000 years, from the moment that the Romans first arrived in the city, which they named Aquae Sulis, and set about building the Roman Baths. Work began on a sanctuary for relaxation in 43AD, then in c70AD they began the construction of their extensive, unequalled spa. Bath’s reputation was augmented, especially in the eighteenth-century, when it became a spa destination of choice offering assemblies, balls, diversions and entertainments. In this glorious setting, one could also take a six-week cure, particularly for gout and skin disorders, by bathing in and drinking the naturally occurring hot mineral water.
This Musing aims to highlight the Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel’s association with Bath as a place of entertainment, discovery, health, respite and relaxation, and to link it with earlier and later spa revivals, during which increasingly spectacular establishments appeared.
The Gainsborough started life as the United Hospital, which took its name from the union of the Bath Casualty Hospital (founded in 1788 to treat injuries sustained by labourers constructing the greatly expanding city) and the Bath City Dispensary and Infirmary, founded in 1792 as a consequence of the 1747 Bath Pauper Scheme; a charity providing medical treatment for the destitute.
It was designed between 1824 and 1826 by the accomplished Bath architect, John Pinch the Elder (c1770-1827) and has since been much altered. In 1861-64, Manners & Gill added a massive attic storey to the original eleven-bay building facing onto Beau Street, as well as a new west wing overlooking Hot Bath Street. This was later named the Albert Wing in commemoration of Prince Albert’s untimely death after which, in 1868, Queen Victoria conferred the Royal title on the United Hospital. Although it was known as the Royal United Hospital from then on, I will continue to refer to it in this Musing as the United Hospital to avoid confusion with what we now know today as the RUH (Royal United Hospital, Combe Park) of which the United Hospital was the forerunner and into which it was ultimately absorbed in 1932.
Pinch’s design is bold and severe, in contrast with his elegant domestic work such as Bath’s New Sydney Place (1807-08). The building comprised ten wards, as well as (it is thought) a double height, tiered theatre-style operating room and basement mortuary. Both the operating theatre and mortuary were advanced features for the time but were – I believe – swept away by later alterations. There was also a laboratory, kitchens and a garden. Research continues….
The exterior is stylistically similar to John Wood the Elder’s General Hospital, Upper Borough Walls with a four-column attached Ionic pedimented portico, although at The Gainsborough the columns are confined to the first floor, rather than flanking the main entrance. Manners & Gill added a chapel in 1849 (possibly today’s Somerset Room), which was then rebuilt by Wallace Gill in 1864. Browne & Gill added an additional stone-vaulted chapel in 1897-98, which is where the majority of expert talks for Strictly Jane Austen Tour’s celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth will be held.
The Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel comprises two Grade II listed structures – the 1826 United Hospital (including the 1864 Albert Wing) and the neighbouring Bellot’s Hospital. The rear of the John Pinch block, which overlooks Lower Borough Walls, was rebuilt c2009/2010 in a convincingly Georgian style and this tasteful new building accommodates the beautiful be-columned spa pool, set in a central atrium. To the best of my knowledge, this is not listed, but may well be in the fullness of time! Today, the ground floor of the Albert Wing houses the hotel’s Brasserie and Bar with appealing and attractive accommodation on the floors above, as is true in the main and the new building, and Bellot’s Hospital.
The Gainsborough, from the outset, was inextricably bound up with the thermal waters of Bath, which is scarcely surprising as it is in the midst of what I can only now think of as the ‘Thermal Corridor’ which runs from the Roman Baths, Pump Room, King’s and Queen’s Baths, the Cross Bath, Hetling Pump Room and Hot Bath. Space does not allow me to exhaustively discuss the history of contemporary and later spas here – which I hope to revisit in a future Musing – so, I introduce the most important ones, all of which used the mineral waters and are on easily-recognisable sites….
The Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (aka The Mineral Water Hospital, 1738-42, Upper Borough Walls), was originally the General Hospital, set up for the visiting poor to receive treatment. In common with the United Hospital, it used Bath’s thermal springs for medicinal purposes, with water piped direct to the building from 1830, as did Bellot’s Hospital next door. The Gainsborough hotel is now linked to this building by a subterranean tunnel giving access to its courtyard rooms and central courtyard.
The Tepid Bath on Beau Street (built between1829-30 and demolished 1922) was replaced by the 1923 Beau Street Baths, which was in turn swept away by Thermae Bath Spa (aka The New Royal Bath) in 1999-2006, directly opposite The Gainsborough.
Other impressive structures, all linked to spa revivals and state-of-the-art treatments, appeared later, all of them relevant to The Gainsborough’s history and with their sites easily recognisable today. These include the little-known – but sensational -Grand Pump Room Hotel and the New Queen’s Baths, which I will discuss in my next Gainsborough Musing.
In December 1932, the United Hospital moved from Beau Street and was absorbed into RUH (the Royal United Hospital, Combe Park); a site previously used by the 1916 Bath War Hospital. In 1935, the Bath Technical College transferred from the north wing of The Guildhall to the vacated United Hospital premises which were later referred to as ‘The Gainsborough Building’. The college stayed on until around 2005, gradually moving over the decades to their present day, massively extended, Avon Street campus.
In the early 2000s, before it fully decamped, The Gainsborough Building was sometimes used for lively Bath Festival/Fringe events which ‘yours truly’ attended and I wonder now if the two stained glass roundels just outside The Chapel, apparently celebrating Performance, live on as forgotten heralds of a long ago exhibition….
The Gainsborough Building was named in honour of the prominent eighteenth-century portraitist, Sir Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). A rival of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he came to Bath in 1759 hoping to attract fashionable clientele; a fortuitous move as he was later able to rent 17 The Circus – an immensely respectable address – for eight years until 1774. It is entirely appropriate that The Gainsborough Hotel has retained this prestigious name.
The Gainsborough opened as a hotel in July 2015, following an earlier archaeological excavation and a sensitive restoration by Archer Humphryes Architects which began c2007. The practice also designed the spa, which is often mistaken for the reconstruction of an ancient building, to make this the only hotel in the UK to have its own supply of Bath’s hot waters.
Tantalising links to the past can still be glimpsed in the hotel. For example, parts of a fourth-century Roman complex with the remains of an intricate, geometric mosaic, uncovered in an 1864 excavation, is now preserved below an accurate replica in the Spa Village.
And there is treasure too! In 1864, a Victorian time capsule buried to commemorate the construction of the Albert Wing, was discovered. The wide glass bottle contained two eighteenth-century documents, a book of subscriptions to the Working Men’s Fund and a parchment scroll. Much later during The Gainsborough’s restoration in 2007, a Roman hoard of 17,500 coins, dating from 32BC to 270AD, was discovered beneath John Pinch the Elder’s foundations; one of the largest monetary hoards ever to be found in Britain. It is now known as ‘The Beau Street Hoard’and is in the care of the British Museum, although examples of its coins and an informative book are displayed in The Gainsborough’s reception for all to see.
Dr Moira Rudolf, a Walking Tour Guide, first trained as an Art Historian (University of Manchester, Department of History of Art), with an especial interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before she returned to her first love, Architectural History, in which she gained her doctorate (University of London, Courtauld Institute). She has a lifelong enthusiasm for the architectural/social history of Bath, having fallen in love with the city at the age of five, and – somewhat later – with the life, works and wit of Jane Austen. After all, who could resist Mr Tilney, or even Mr Darcy? Moira will leading a guided countryside walk of the sort Jane Austen enjoyed and giving a fascinating talk as part of our special programmes celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary in April and October 2025.
