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The Crystal Palace. 10-11 Wood Street. |
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An illustrated look back at its Past |
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The building we see today called the Crystal Palace, opened in 1851 as an Inn and was named after the famous Exhibition held in Hyde Park in that year. It was designed by Thomas Baldwin in 1764 for a Dr.Grant. The architect refaced an earlier edifice in Bath Stone, which was originally constructed in 1610 by the Carpenter, James Cotterell. For much of its early existence it was used as Lodgings for the extensive Three Tuns on Stall street whose massive Yard stretched back behind it. The site was owned by the Dukes of Kingston, although it was descendants of the influential Chapmans who leased it.
In 1756,the wealthy Apothecary, Richard Harford purchased the lease and resided there until his untimely death seven years later. It was then bought by a Dr. Grant and his family from Scotland who divided it into two parts. They lived in no. 10 and a door at the side, which still exists was for no.11 where they took in Lodgers. After they left it was to remain two separate Lodging Houses, with a Mrs Lloyd and Mrs Norton. The latter was to remain there for over 30 years. She is famous today for charging £2 a week to the naval hero, Horatio Nelson and his wife for their stay in 1783 after the Battle of the Nile.
By 1800 it was owned by a Richard Cruttwell who as well as owning the Bath Chronicle and a printing business used the area behind as a Carriers Yard and lived at no. 10. He was there until 1820 when the Carrier business was bought by Charles Tanner who lived with his family in the house facing in to Abbey Green. It was bought by Joshua and Harriet Knight in 1851 who opened it as Public House. They ran their business there for 20 years and in 1872, William McCoombe took on the The family were to remain there until the death of Emily McCoombe in 1934. It was put up for Auction on 13th of August and Russell’s Brewers from Rode paid £3050 for it. The following year they demolished the top floor , where the previous owners brewed their beer, as it was no longer needed. It was the landlord, Rob Wain, who in 1981 was to find a Roman Mosaic in the Cellar and was to become a Celebrity as a result. It has changed hands a number of times since and is now run by the Brewers, Fullers. |
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An elongated view of the 3 Tuns Lodgings as they looked in 1785 with the passage way underneath 9 Abbey Green (Mignon House) now covered in with a side window to the passage. |
The
Three Tuns Lodging (W)
The last building (10) which Johnson shows round the
King's Bath is part of the Three Tuns Lodging. Through the middle of this lodging
(and just off the picture) a way led out of the yard of the Three Tuns Inn into
the small open area shown in the left foreground of the picture. Johnson has here
used a certain artistic licence and omitted the low building at the corner of
the Bath which, if included, would have obscured the view of the Queen's Bath.
For the same reason he has lowered Sir Francis Stonor's balustrade along the south
side of the King's Bath which, in both Schellinks' and Dingley's drawings, appears
built at a higher level than on the other three sides.
The Three Tuns Inn,
the largest property in Stall Street with 33 fireplaces in 1654, had a covered
entrance leading through the middle to a large yard with stables and outbuildings.
This yard could also be approached from Abbeygate Street and through a six-feet-wide
passage from Abbey Green. The Three Tuns yard ran north to south behind the Inn
and other Stall Street houses. At the north end of it stood the Three Tuns Lodging.
The still standing western wall of the old Priory divided the yard from the back
of the Stall Street houses. The landlord of the Inn therefore held the property
(10) on two leases: one from the Corporation and one from the owner of the ex-Priory
land which lay behind. In 1669 the landlord was William Landick, one of whose
trade tokens bearing that date is amongst the collection belonging to the Bath
Royal Scientific and Literary Institution. On one side of the token are three
barrels and on the other a facsimile of Landick's signature.
Guidott's informative
plan of the King's and Queen's Bath shows the outflow gouts from each of these
Baths and their meeting point below the open area between the Three Tuns Lodging
(10) and the King's Bath. It is noteworthy that Johnson has drawn what looks like
a covered hatch over this same meeting point. The gout from the King's Bath gave
a good deal of trouble. The Chamberlain's Accounts have many entries for cleansing
and emptying it and in 1664 a boy was made to crawl into it to hack away a large
stone. All manner of things were thrown into the Baths. No doubt too the old rags
which the bath-guides used to stuff the gouts, and which were left lying about
stained yellow and ill-smelling, sometimes disappeared into the outflow contributing
to the blockages.
Although Schellinks ignores the Three Tuns Lodging in his
drawing it was already in situ by 1654. An entry in the Council Minute Book for
that year states that it was agreed that "Philip Sherwood and Mr. George
Kennis shall not build a slipp . . . out of the way belonging to the Three Tuns
Lodging House next to the Queen's Bath into the same Bath". Permission to
make this slip had already been requested six years previously and on this occasion
the Council had refused even to put it to the vote. Perhaps Schellinks' omission
was for the same reason as that of Johnson mentioned above, namely that he felt
it more important to show the whole of William Swallow's lodging (11) which lay
behind. William Swallow's Lodging House and Dr Robert Peirce's House (11 and12)
The gable end (11) with the small circular window seen in Schellinks' picture
near the far right-hand corner of the King's Bath, together with the wing set
back at right angles and perhaps built later, was the historic building known
in 1591 as "The Starre Chamber or Dr Sprint's Lodging" and, the following
year, as "all those buildinge Roomes late in the tenure of Dr Sprint".30
The wing may have been added between 1592 and 1611 when a lease refers to "all
that messuage or Tenement commonly called Sprintes Lodging or Starre Chamber and
all those new erected lodgings chambers and rooms thereunto belonging". William
Hodnett, gentleman, occupied the house from 1612-" and it was during his
time that Queen Anne was said to have stayed there. Hodnett mortgaged the property
to Bernard Atkins who took over the lease in 1638. By 1654 the house was occupied
by William Swallow whose family remained there into the mid-1700s when it was
divided into two parts. During all this while the property was run as a lodging
house. It had its own bath-door leading, it seems likely, out of the low building
with a sloping roof adjoining the gable end of the main building.
The above
house stood, like Dr Peirce's (12), on land previously belonging to the Benedictine
Priory or Abbey. This land began ten to fifteen feet back from the east end of
the King's Bath. The exact line of the actual precinct wall has not been settled.
It was generally taken that the King's Bath lay outside the Priory though in the
care of the monks. More recently the Bath Archaeological Trust has postulated
that the Bath lay actually within the precinct
walls. While this matter remains
unresolved it should be noted that a lease32 of 1591, only fifty-two years after
the Dissolution of the Priory, records a highway leading out of the King's Bath
into the Abbey towards the dwelling house of Edmond Colthurst (12). This highway,
in the vicinity of "the Starre Chamber or Dr Sprint's Lodging", meets
with "the wall embattl'd on the west side of the Abbye". Comparison
of this lease with later ones of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries33 indicates
that this "embat-tl'd wall" may have lain fifty feet to the east of
the King's Bath.
Edmond Colthurst's house (afterwards known as Abbey House,
Priory House and the Royal Lodging) was the residence of Dr Robert Peirce from
1661 until his death in 1710. As already said, the house was connected to the
King's Bath by a covered gallery from which a stairway, known as the Great Stairs,
led down through a door opening to the Bath. For these facilities Dr Peirce paid
rents to the Corporation of ten shillings and fourpence respectively. On the far
side of his house lay a garden and there was a side door into the Abbey Church
- very convenient, said Peirce, for brides that limped.
This house (12) lay
some hundred and twenty feet back from the east end of the King's Bath. Schellinks
has indicated it by the straight roof with a single chimney in the centre back
of his picture. It must be said, though, that this roof line is substantially
different from the one shown in the picture at the top left of Gilmore's contemporary
map. Dr C. Lucas, writing in 1756, the year after the house had been pulled down,
describes it as a "rude, irregular Gothic building". He was indignant
that it had been concealing all those years the "very elegant Roman Baths
and sudatories" that were found beneath.34 It is known that Schellinks made
notes and sketches to enable him to finish parts of his drawings later. Pressed
as he was for time in Bath, did he fad afterwards the more distant houses at the
far end not "^mediately beside the Bath? It is difficult to write in any
detail wout the buildings he has only lightly sketched at the east end
. ^though
the Italianate one with the pointed roof and arcades ^ tost floor level must be
the end of Dr Peirce's covered gallery. 1^131^ Placed building of the same height
but less glamor-appearance can be seen in the 1764 print of the King's Bath west
end by William Elliot |
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34.
"Higgs' Tenement". M 4184, 1753
In 1616 this site was let to Thomas
Cotterell, joiner, evidently for development, and described as garden ground in
the occupation of Robert Evans. By 1632 it was let as a messuage and garden to
William Chapman, mercer.
The house appears as "Mr Webbs Lodgings in the
Abby Green" in the right-hand bottom border of Gilmore's map. With a central
porch and a bay at each side, it appears to match the plan shown here, from M
4184. Gilmore shows the house as set back twenty feet from Speed's site, as described
in early 18th century leases. In the Survey of the Manor before John Hall's death,
early 18th century, it appears as "Mrs Webb for Higgs". In 1716 Thomas
Bushell (leaseholder of the Tuns
Inn) held a lease "for a house late
Joseph Higgs in Abby Green". It later passed, like the Tuns, to Harrington
and Hull. The property was bought by John Harford, apothecary, in 1753. A plan
of 1816 shows the west side of the plot as "Cruttwell's Wagon Yard".
The site is now the Crystal Palace. |
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The
Three Tuns entrance on to Stall Street in 1694 |
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Mr
Webbs Lodgings as depicted by Gilmour in 1694
(now the Crystal Palace) |
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The
building which the artist Johnson shows round the King`s Bath on the left is part
of the Three Tuns Lodging. The Three Tun`s was the largest property in Stall Street
with 33 fireplaces in 1654. It had a covered entrance leading through the middle
to a yard with stables and outbuildings. This yard could be approached from Abbeygate
Street and through a six foot passage alongside 9 Abbey Green and what is now
the Crystal Palace ( then described as Webbs Lodgings, see Gilmor`s print above) |
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Blue
shaded area:The Apparent site of the house built by Thomas Cotterell in 1616,
with its garden presumed to be cost of it (Eg Ch 5827)
Rg Ch, 5829. 2 October
1616 John Hall to John Blackleache. Premises of the Tuns Lodgings, speaks of the
"Watering Place" as being "West" of the new way, and the rest
as being Heath's garden, This would make Thomas Cotterell`s land = Heath's Garden,
However Speed drew conduits as boxes (see St. M`s, High Street) and his drawing
ought to = the Little Conduit House of Thomas Cotterell`s Lease.
Red
Shaded Area: what is presumed to be the backside of one of the 3 messuages
that went with Eg 5829. (Ann Leyton's backside, (see 5827) presumably added to
34 after 1729 when it gave up 20 feet.When
John Harford bought the site from the Duke of Kingston in 1753, the layout of
the sale plan matched the front of "Mr. Webb`s Lodgings in the Abby Green"
of Gilmour`s Map. It seems likely that the redevelopment was done by Thomas Baldwin
and was created between that date and Benjamin Morris`s picture of c. 1785. The
first lease for building on the site after the dissolution is one for John Hall
to Thomas Cotterell, joiner, in 1616 ( Egerton Charters 5827). It seems likely
that he put up a timber-frame house, possibly reface3d in stone by John Chapman
of Weston in 1660, becoming "Webb`s". At present our theory is that
it had the garden in front, between it and the land of the Green, like the Garden
house on the other side (the site of North Parade Buildings). This would make
it easy for Thomas Bushell to give up twenty feet in front, as he had to do by
1720. He seems to have compensated the house by giving it its garden at the back
from land once belongingto the Tuns stables. |
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October
1748:
To be sold, an Inn called the Three Tuns in the City of Bath; together
with the coach house and stables ... in possession of Mr Joseph Phillott ... also
a Messuage call'd the Three Tuns Lodging, and also a messuage in the Abbey Green
in the possession of Rebecca Salmon. |
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The
Crystal Palace opened in the old lodging house of the Three Tuns in 1851 or 1852,
its name commemorating the Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace. The wood
panelling in the bar of No 10 (where Nelson is believed to have stayed) was salvaged
from the old Three Tuns when it was demolished.
closed around 1935 and the
top floor was removed, its roof marks can still be seen on the gable end of the
building next door. Legend has it that, while digging a well in the back yard
to supply the brewery with water, workmen tapped into a hot spring, which was
capped on the understanding that the Corporation would lay on a free supply of
cold water.
The 1903 report on the Crystal Palace described it as having a
glass room, a tap room and a drinks bar. At the back was a skittle alley and a
private yard with a passage leading to Swallow Street.
In 1951 Bert Oliver,
who had been a stocktaker at Fussell's Brewery in Frome, took over the licence. |
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A Map based on plans from the1740s of the Kingston Estate showing the Three Tuns on Stall Street, before York Street was cut through. The large complex of buildings and yards can be seen at the rear. There was a passage way into Abbey Green at the sie of what is today The Crystal Palace, then Higgs Tenement. Scotts Tenement is Minion House ( Bath Retro store) today and the side window would have one time been the entrance to the pasage through to the Three Tuns Yard. |
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Roy Wain, the land
lord of the Crystal Palace became a celebrity when he uncovered several skeletons
and a Roman mosaic in the cellar in 1981. It was decided not to try to move the
mosaic, but to preserve it underneath a layer of polythene and sand, where it
remains today. A photograph above shows the fine detailing of this section of
the floor. |
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From the "Omniun-Gatherum"
by Richard Warner includes above 20th August 1814 signed "Archaeus".
Cruttwells were a large printing Office who published the Bath Chronicle and a
number of books on Bath. This is an early reference to the mosaic that was later
found in the cellar of the "Crystal Palace"in Abbey Green. A late Saxon
Church - St. James is also believed to have stood on this site, though in 1279
a replace ment was built by the South Gate, which was demolished in 1959 and now
is under Marks and Spencers Store. |
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The Tuns Lodgings
and Stabling. KE 1750 M 1808
The southern front of the Tuns Lodgings can be
seen in Gilmore's map, left-hand bottom border, and the northern in Johnson's
and William Elliott's pictures of the King's Bath. Dr. Leyson (Leason, Lyson etc.)
evidently held the lodgings at the beginning of the 17th century. By 1616 the
owners of the Tuns Inn in Stalls Street took over the lease for it and the land
south, while Leyson's widow was offered a place in St. John's hospice. The Tuns
also secured rights of way to Abbey Lane and the Abbey Green. In 1750 Hull and
Harrington, leaseholders of the Tuns Inn itself, are listed for 31.
The courtyard
north of the Tuns Lodgings seems to have belonged in the early stages to the Mayor
and Corporation. This is not definitely established yet.
The stabling complex
was replaced by Swallow Street following the agreement of 1808. The site of the
Tuns Lodgings is now within the Museum premises.
Medieval deeds refer to the
land east of Stalls Street as the Bishop's court. A study of the Bishop's premises
is being prepared by the Survey of Old Bath. |
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The
Nelsons, as a couple, made a final visit to Bath in 1798 to escape the fumes of
London. They were staying at Abbey Green when Nelson left once more for the Mediterranean.
Fanny and his father Edmund Nelson visited Bath for many more years. On their
last visit, Nelson and his wife were negotiating for the small cottage Nelson
craved when exhausted by life at sea. The house 'Roundwood' near Ipswich was quite
substantial with farm buildings and sixty acres of ground.
Promoted to Rear
Admiral and made a Knight of the Bath, Nelson had now established himself as a
man of property. His father died in Bath in 1802. Fanny was severely ill in 1805.
She received news of Trafalgar as she arrived in the city for the cure. She continued
to visit the city until 1815. Nelson eventually lived in Merton House, Wimbledon
near London with his daughter and his 'companion' dearest Emma Hamilton, possibly
his only real personal success.
amputation,
recommended that Nelson see a London surgeon better qualified than he; consul
tat ion cost a guinea. Impressed by his patient. Falconer's wife later related
to Fanny that, had he been single he would have signed up to join Nelson. His
surgeon, Mr Nicolls at 14 Queen Square, quite close to the Nelson lodgings, dressed
the wound daily while Nelson was in Bath. Its apothecary was Nelson's former landlord
Joseph Spry of 2 Pierrepont Street.
It be wound, according to the practice
by which Nelson's arm was amputated, was to leave the "long silk ligatures
hanging out of the wound after the operation, so that as suppuration took place
and the ligatures separated by necrosis and granulation, they could be pulled
out the second or fourth weeks' says Surgeon Commander Pugh in A'p/son and his
Surgeons. There is a lot of discussion as to the best technique, with various
opinions offered, suffice it to say that, thankfully. Nelson survived and was
a testament to the surgeon Thomas Eshelby and subsequent after-care.
Fanny
at last could nurse her beloved husband, who ensured she could dress his wound
and act as his secretary. Writing with his left hand to Earl St Vintent following
the raid on Santa Cruz, he described his lot: ' A left-handed Admiral will never
again be considered useful, therefore the sooner I gel to a very humble cottage
the better, and make room for a better man to serve the State'. To give the re-united
couple some privacy, his father Edmund had arranged lodgings in Chailes Street
just around the corner now that New King Street was getting quite full. Along
with his sister, William Nelson hurried over from Norfolk to see his brother,
as announced in the Bath Chronicle, Nelson wrote with his left hand a letter of
acceptance lo the Bath Corporation for the Freedom of the City, and strangely
an editorial appears in the Chronicle addressed to 'Nurses, Parents and Guardians
a petition by Nelson's Left hand, that you are not a lost cause with only one
arm'. Earlier in the year the flag officers at the Battle of Cape St Vincent were
made Freemen of the City: Admiral Sir John Jervis, Vice Admiral Waldegrave. Vice
Admiral Thompson. Rear Admiral Parker and Commodore Nelson. This entitled them
all to a pension of £25 per year. Nelson was offered the Freedom of mam
cities, such as Bristol but, as with Bath, never collected it-Nelson spent two
weeks in Bath, before setting out for London. He had an audience with the King,
being presented by Admiral Earl 11 owe, to be invested \s Ith "the red sash'
of a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath, and he re<ei\ed the Freedom
of the City of London from John Wilkes of 'Liberty' fame. Now famous, he was much
in demand by artists, in particular he sat for the painter Lemuel Abbot and the
sculptor Lawrence Gahagan. He attended a service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's
Cathedral with the Royal Family lor the recent victories at sea. By the middle
of December his wound had sufficiently healed for the Royal College of Surgeons
o pass him fit to be appointed to a new vessel, and he was eager to rejoin John
Jervis, now ennobled as Earl St Vincent, and return to sea. He wrote to his Captain.
Edward Berry, to 'speedily marry or Mrs Berry will have little of your company.'
The
topic (hat had dominated Nelson's correspondence with Fanny while at sea was to
fix somewhere of their own to live. Susannah Bolton's brother-in-law Sam had found
a suitable property which Fanny and Nelson drove from London to view. The 'little
cottage', in (act Roundwood Farm comprising nearly 60 acres, near Ipswich, was
quickly bought by Nelson for £2000. The papers were signed in November 1797
and witnessed by Captain Berry, but the tenant still had six months of tenancy
to run before they could take possession of the house.
In 1798 the smoke of
London proved too much for Fanny, and so they returned to Bath in January for
a two week holiday while awaiting the preparation of the I'aiiguard. They lodged
in 11 Abbey Green (now part of the Crystal Palace public house); the proprietor
was a Mrs Norton who charged 10s 6d (52'/*p) a week and 5s 6d (27'Ap) for servants.
The only remnant from this period is possibly the Georgian grate in the Lounge
bar of the Crystal Palace. The magnificent 'plane' tree in the centre of ihe square
Nelson would have know n.
The Nelsons look full advantage ot the pleasures
of Bath. Nelson writes of the pleasure of attending ihe Theatre Royal, Orchard
Street. Taking Earl Lansdowne's plate in Mr Palmer's box, he wrote, "his
Lordship did not tell me all its charms, that generally some of ihe most handsomest
ladies in Bath are partakers in the box. and was I a bachelor I would not answer
for being tempted: but I am possessed of everything which is valuable in a wife,
I have no occasion to think beyond a pretty face'. Nelson goes on to mention how,
although there was a Fund for the present war, he felt his contribution would
be to 'debar myself of many comforts to serve my Country, and 1 expect great consolation
every time I cut a slice of salt beef instead of mutton*. Other attractions were
the Assembly Rooms to play cards, concerts or Balls, but much ot the time was
spent paying social calls and catching up on relatives.
Across the way from
[heir lodgings lived Admiral Samuel Barrington at I Abbey Green, a good friend
of both Nelson and Fanny, who they knew from their time in the West Indies. Barrmgton
was a contemporary oFJohn Jervis, the two of them as young officers had surveyed
all the major naval ports of the Baltic, North Sea and Mediterranean. Samuel Barrington's
cousin, Mr Daines Barrington, a naturalist, was instrumental in the Admiralty's
expedition u> the Arctic of the bomb vessels Carrass and Racehorse, when Nelson
had served as coxswain in his Captain's gig.
Little is recorded in their correspondence
of their activities, the stay lasted three weeks. Fanny returned later to Bath
for a further few months staying with Edmund to sort out their effects that were
held in storage in Bath at Wiltshire's 'near the old Bridge', for removal to their
new home in Ipswich. Her household consisted of, 'an old Catholic cook near 60
years ol age, a girl of fourteen and Will' . She dined with Captain Phillip and
his wife, who had commanded the first fleet to Australia, both good friends of
the Xelsons. Edmund sent Nelson items down on the wagon to Portsmouth from the
Angel Inn, Bath.
In March 1798 Nelson returned to Portsmouth and his new command,
Vanguard. In a letter to Fanny he tells her to check the weather vane on the roof
of St Mary's chapel in Queen Square (now demolished but it stood on the south-west
corner; a small colonnaded monument now marks the spot) to see whether he had
sailed. Departure delayed through contrary winds, Nelson checked his wife's packing
which, much to his frustration, did not seem to match the lists accompanying his
chests. He was short of socks, stocks and small amounts of gold, and in fact had
to send ashore for more clothes which, much to his disdain, were double the price
of the originals. Eventually, at the beginning of April, he set sail for Portugal.The
next Bath heard of Nelson's exploits, as in London, was in October 1798, with
the news of the victory on 1 August at the Battle of the Nile and the defeat of
the French Fleet. A collection was made for orphans and widows, reported in the
Bath Journal of 15 October, the Guildhall and lending libraries: Bull's. Baratt's,
Mevler, Bally's, Marshall's, Brown's, Hazard's, amounting to £453.9s.4d.
In Bath the celebrations were suitably patriotic and reported in November: 'At
the particular request of the Magistrates, the inhabitants did not illuminate
their houses on the evening of Wednesday last, but the joy that displayed itself
by every other means is not to be described - gilt laurels, elegant ribbons with
appropriate muttos, appeared in every bosom. The mayor gave an elegant cold collation
at the hall with a general in\Station to the whole corps of Bath volunteers and
to the inhabitants at large, when the greatest harmony prevailed to a later hour.
The mayor's toast was given with the most enthusiastic bursts of approbation and
loyalty
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Here
Nelson and his wife came to stay for the last time together in Bath to escape
the fumes of London for two weeks before his return to sea in the Vanguard. The
only relic from that period is the fireplace in the liar to the left of the entrance.
Nelson would have also known the Plane tree in the centre of the Green.
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The Crystal Palace
has only been a pub for just over 150 years. The building, however, dates from
the early seventeenth century, and was originally used as lodgings for the Three
Tuns Inn in Stall Street.
The Three Tuns started out in the late sixteenth
century as an alehouse built up against the wall of the Abbey precincts - roughly
where Swallow Street is today. The tenant of the house, Philip Sherwood, had "a
post thrust out of the wall of the house and thereon a little sign of three tunns
hanging, resembling the sign of an alehouse." In 1620, he obtained a licence
from Sir Giles Mompesson to turn his alehouse into an inn, "whereupon he
set a new fair sign of three
is, and fixed to support it two great posts in
the
..
revoked his licence on a technicality. This may have been part
of a campaign to suppress unnecessary drinking establishments, but is more likely
to have been an attempt by the Chapman family, who not only owned Bath's biggest
inns but were also influential councillors, to stifle competition.
Sherwood
called the Corporation's bluff and "refused contemptuously to take down his
sign." The Corporation sent the bailiffs round to remove it, only to be confronted
by Sherwood's son "with a loaded weapon and a maidservant with gunpowder."
When a crowd of around 300 people turned up to see what would happen next, the
bailiffs withdrew, only to return when things had quietened down to complete their
task.
The next day, Philip Sherwood put his sign back and filed a complaint
with the Privy Council. Even though they upheld the Corporation's opposition to
the inn and the "sundry disorders" that had occurred there, the Three
Tuns stayed open. Its proximity to the King's Bath soon made it popular with those
coming to immerse themselves in the waters. A diary from 1634, preserved in the
British Museum, records the arrival of some officers from Wells:
To this Citty
we came late and wet and entred stumbling . . . over a fayre archt Bridge crossing
Avon ... and heere we billetted our Selves at the 3 Tuns close by the King's Bath
- And now prepared wee with the skillfull directions of our Ancient to take a
Preparative to fit our jumbled weary Corps to enter and take refreshment in those
admired, unparalelld medicinable sulphureous hot Bathes."
In 1632, Philip
Sherwood was elected to the council and thereafter regularly supplied goods to
the Corporation. In 1640, for example, he supplied a "pottle of sack which
was brought to the hall." In the following year he provided the Recorder
with "lodging, fier and beare." He had clearly patched up any disagreement
with the Chapmans and during the Civil War served under Henry Chapman, the landlord
of the Sun in the Market Place, as the Lieutenant of the Bath Trained Bands.
In
1666, the Three Tuns was leased from the Corporation by a Mr Smeaton. The lease
passed to William Sherston in 1679 and to Richard Ford, an apothecary, in 1719.
Its dimensions in 1719 were recorded as 18 feet 3 inches by 16 feet 4 inches.
Clearly, this was just the original alehouse. When Philip Sherwood turned it into
an inn, he had not expanded the original property, but acquired buildings nearby
to use as lodgings and dining rooms. A new dining room was added around 1718,
for in September that year, Dr Claver Morris of Wells recorded in his diary,
We
continued at Bath. I was called in to Mr Harington at Kelston. I got Mr Du Burg,
Mr Shojan, Mr Walter, and Mr David Baswiwaldt to go with me. We dined there, and
had a Consort of Musick. We returned to Bath in the evening, and 1 entertained
them with 3 fowles and wine in the great new drawing room at the Three Tuns, where
I had a performance of Musick by these extraordinary hands.
The adjacent buildings
were still not formally regarded as part of the inn in the mid-eighteenth century,
as an advertisement from the Bath Journal of 1748 indicates:
The Three Tuns
Inn &Javern to be sold, in the city of Bath together with the coach houses
and stables thereto belonging. And also a messuage called the Three Tuns Lodgings,
and a House and Garden in the Abbey Green.
The property in Abbey Green later
became the Crystal Palace. A further advertisement appeared on 10 October 1748:
To
be sold, an Inn called the Three Tuns in the City of Bath; together with the coach
house and stables ... in possession of Mr Joseph Phillott ... also a Messuage
call'd the Three Tuns Lodging, and also a messuage in the Abbey Green in the possession
of Rebecca Salmon.
Joseph Phillott, the grandson of a French immigrant, was
at the Three Tuns till 1767, when he left to take over the Bear in Cheap Street.
His place was taken by Abraham Eve. The Three Tuns was a favourite meeting place
for friendly and benevolent societies in the late eighteenth century. In 1778,
for example, the Friendly Brothers of the Bath Knot and the Brothers of the Ancient
& Most Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of St Patrick used it as
their headquarters.
In 1774, Henry Phillips from the Saracen's Head took over
the Three Tuns. He, in turn was replaced by J Williams from Beckhampton in 1783.
The following year, when the mailcoach service was introduced, the Three Tuns
was chosen as its depot in Bath. On 4 August 1784, the Bath Chronicle reported
that
the new mail diligence set off from Bristol on Monday last for the first
time at four o'clock and from the Three Tuns in this city at twenty minutes after
five the same evening. From London it set out at eight on Monday evening and was
in Bath by nine the next morning.
Shortly afterwards Joseph Dobson took over
the Three Tuns. In 1789, he disposed of the Coach, Chaise and Stabling Business
to Henry Phillips (who had been the landlord from 1774 to 1783), but kept the
Inn and Tavern on. As coaching businesses mushroomed in size towards the end of
the eighteenth century, there was an increasing tendency for them to be run and
owned separately from the inns in which they had started off. At around this time,
the Three Tuns increased its capacity by taking over the coachyard of the old
Bell Inn in Bell Tree Lane.
In 1792, the Three Tuns was taken over by Henry
Ballanger from the Greyhound & Shakespeare in the Market Place. Five years
later he died and the business was carried on by his widow. Early in 1799 Elizabeth
Ballanger married John Reidford. She kept her former name, however, and, on 5
April 1804, put a notice in the Bath Chronicle, thanking all those who had supported
her "during fourteen years residence" at the Three Tuns, but adding
that the inn was now closed. The Three Tuns Inn, set up over 170 years earlier
in the teeth of official opposition, and the stopping place for the first mailcoaches
through the city, had slipped quietly into history.
Eight years later, it was
demolished, In 1812, Thomas Parfet, who was responsible for rebuilding much of
Stall Street, leased "the plot of ground where the Three Tuns stands on the.east
side of Stall Street, [to] build three good stone messuages thereon, fronting
Stall Street, and two fronting York Street. A licence to sell ale was not guaranteed."
However, one of the buildings built on the site of the old Three Tuns did reopen
as a pub, albeit briefly. In 1830, John Rudman was listed as the landlord of a
new Three Tuns in Stall Street. The new inn was taken over by Joseph Claxton in
1839, but closed in the late 1840s.
Despite its early demise, in its heyday
the Three Tuns was one of Bath's best-loved and most boisterous inns, as Smollett's
description of an evening spent there in the company of the great Shakespearian
actor James Quin (1693-1766) makes abundantly clear:
I had hopes of seeing
Quin in his hours of elevation at the tavern, which is the temple of mirth and
good fellowship; where he, as priest of Comus, utters the inspirations of wit
and humour. I have had that satisfaction. I have dined with him at his club at
the Three Tuns, and had the honour to sit him out. At half an hour past eight
in the evening, he was carried home with six good bottles of claret under his
belt; and it being then Friday, he gave orders that he should not be disturbed
till Sunday at noon. You must not imagine that this dose had any other effect
upon his conversation, but that of making it more extravagantly entertaining.
He had lost the use of his limbs, indeed, ' '
several hours before we parted,
but he retained all his other faculties in perfection; and, as he gave vent to
every whimsical idea as it rose, I was really astonished at the brilliancy of
his thoughts, and the force of his expression
The Three Tuns also played a
minor part in one of eighteenth-century Bath's most shameful episodes. One night
in 1778, the French Count and Countess du Barre, were playing cards with an Irish
gentleman called Count Rice at their lodging in the Royal Crescent:
At length
a violent disagreement took place between the two Counts, and each being of an
impetuous disposition, it was resolved that the dispute should terminate with
the death of one or both. Accordingly, they left their abode about one o'clock
in the morning, procured a coach from the Three Tuns in Stall Street; and provided
with arms, seconds, and surgical assistance, reached Claverton Down long before
daybreak. There they paced in sullen silence till dawn began to break, when their
stations were taken. Count Rice fired but his ball did not take effect. Du Barre
returned the fire, and the ball lodged in the groin of his antagonist, who fell;
but raising himself immediately from the ground, he discharged his second pistol
in a recumbent position, the contents of which penetrated the heart of the unfortunate
Du Barre. The parties decamped, and the body of the deceased, Du Barre, was left
on the field of battle for more than twenty-four hours, an object of curiosity
to those who could patiently and calmly witness so horrid a spectacle. The wounded
survivor was taken to the York House, and Monsieur Du Barre was afterwards buried
at Bathampton, where a stone now marks the spot of his interment. Count Rice recovered,
was tried at theTaunton assizes, in 1779, and acquitted.
The death of the Countess,
15 years later, was even more terrible. Arrested by the French revolutionary government
for carrying a picture of Mr Pitt, the British Prime Minister, she was sentenced
to the guillotine:
On her passage to the scaffold, she leaned on the head of
her attendant, and appeared almost dead; but when she reached the fatal spot,
the sight of the instrument of death rallied her fainting spirits. Suddenly she
rose up and rent the air with shrieks, her convulsed frame acquired most extraordinary
strength; and, after a conflict with her executioners, at the relation of which
humanity shudders, the fatal stroke released her from all her sufferings.
The
Crystal Palace opened in the old lodging house of the Three Tuns in 1851 or 1852,
its name commemorating the Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace. The wood
panelling in the bar of No 10 (where Nelson is believed to have stayed) was salvaged
from the old Three Tuns when it was demolished.
closed around 1935 and the
top floor was removed, its roof marks can still be seen on the gable end of the
building next door. Legend has it that, while digging a well in the back yard
to supply the brewery with water, workmen tapped into a hot spring, which was
capped on the understanding that the Corporation would lay on a free supply of
cold water.
The 1903 report on the Crystal Palace described it as having a
glass room, a tap room and a drinks bar. At the back was a skittle alley and a
private yard with a passage leading to Swallow Street.
In 1951 Bert Oliver,
who had been a stocktaker at Fussell's Brewery in Frame, took over the licence.
Food had been a staple of many pubs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
but in the twentieth it had fallen by the wayside. Bert Oliver was one of the
first publicans in Bath to start serving food again, rustling up delicacies such
as fillet steak and chips for 5/6 (27.5p). When he left, Bass sold the pub to
Eldridge Pope, the Dorchester Brewers, and Roy Wain became the new licensee. He
soon became a celebrity when he uncovered several skeletons and a Roman mosaic
in the cellar. It was decided not to try to move the mosaic, but to preserve it
underneath a layer of polythene and sand, where it remains today.
Imaginatively
revamped, with aTitchmarsh-inspired garden at the back, complete with decking,
gazebo and cold-water fountain, the Crystal Palace is a popular oasis in the heart
of the city.
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The Three Tuns on the corner of Stall Street as it appeared in 1805 to Thomas Rowlandson. |
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The property shown here as Victoria House in 1858,which was later built on the corner of Stalls Street and York Street was previously the site of the Three Tuns Inn. An archway leading through the centre of the Inn to the stables at the back is thought originally to have been the entrance into the medieval bishop’s curia. |
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THREE TUNS INN and TAVERN, STALL-STREET, BATH. JOSEPH DOBSON, Lite of the Phanix Inn, Exeter informs the Mobility, Gentry, his friend,, and the Public, that he has taken and entered on the THREE TUNS INN, in BATH, late in the occupation of Mr. Williams; 24 August 1786 - Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette |
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