Now Bath’s top rugby pub, the Pulteney Arms makes for a fascinating history. It is also one of the few eighteenth century pubs in Bath, which can be dated with any accuracy and one of the remaining few over 200 years old!
The first we hear of the Pulteney Arms comes in a newspaper advertisement of 15 November 1792:
To be lett or sold, that very excellent new built Inn or Public House called the Pulteney’s Arms, in Grove Street, Bathwick; with a large yard etc., behind it, where stables and coach-houses, or extensive workshops and ware-rooms, may be advantageously and conspicuously created. Enquire of Mr. Clark, Walcot Brewery.
However, it is thought that the Pulteney Arms was built as a small mansion in 1759 and after the development of the Bathwick Estate was converted into an inn.
During the mid-18th century Bath was expanding, but the rural Bathwick estate of William Johnstone Pulteney was separated from the city by the River Avon, and the only means of crossing the river being via a small ferry. They decided a bridge needed to be built. Architect Robert Adam was influenced by his travels to Florence and Venice and proposed a bridge incorporating shops along both sides. This was completed in 1773, but Pulteney's original plans did not take effect until 1788 when Bath architect Thomas Baldwin started to create a new estate.
Bathwick New Town, of which Great Pulteney Street was just a small part, was intended to be on a huge scale. It was planned to put a network of interconnected grand parades around Sydney Gardens. Then, in 1793, the money ran out. Bath suffered a drop in popularity on the advent of the French Revolutionary Wars. Two of Bath’s six banks went bust. Builders went bankrupt and the construction halted. The city became unfashionable as society began to favour the salt water of the sea to the mineral water of Bath.
Thomas Baldwin got no further that the first three houses on the southern side, of which number 37, at the end, is the Pulteney Arms. In style and design they are almost indistinguishable from the houses in Sydney Place. The rest of the street, built by John Pinch around 1820, makes no attempt to imitate or blend in with the earlier development. The result is still, nevertheless, very attractive and a graphic illustration on how far styles in domestic architecture had changed between the 1790’s and the 1820’s.
For the most telling contrast between the original vision and what succeeded it, you can do no better than go to Daniel Street and stand outside the Pulteney Arms.
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