An exquisite home just outside Bath with a history that touches on Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Jack the Ripper and the invention of the flushing loo
Batheaston House's beauty is only surpassed by its fascinating history.
Old houses are like onions. Peel away one layer, and another is waiting for you; and another, and another, and another.
The property which prompted this though is Batheaston House, situated three miles outside the centre of Bath itself, and newly on the market through via Savills with an asking price of £4.25 million.
The first thing that caught my eye about the place — and no doubt yours — were the pictures. This is a classic Queen Anne house, with a touch of mini-French chateau about its charming symmetry and steeply-pitched roof, set amid an acre and a quarter of gardens that are nothing short of blissful.
Inside, room after room is spacious, filled with light, dripping with character and gorgeously decorated.
The bathrooms are a particular highlight; one is double aspect, with three huge sash windows making the most of wonderful views across Somerset. To find a place like this with such bucolic charm just five minutes from the middle of Bath (not in rush hour traffic, of course) is really something.
Peel back those first few layers, though, and the story behind the place is fascinating. The house as it stands today dates to 1712 (unsurprisingly, it’s Grade II*-listed), but that work — commissioned by Henry Walters, then the High Sheriff of Somerset —was built on top of an earlier, Tudor home belonging to Sir John Harrington, a godson of Elizabeth I, who is renowned for inventing the first flushing loo. (Surprisingly, it didn’t take off: Sir John and Good Queen Bess both had them, but the invention didn’t take off for another 200 years.)
Another iconic monarch also has links to the house: Queen Victoria, whose youngest granddaughter Princess Beatrice apparently had piano lessons at Batheaston, courtesy of the exotically-named musician Francesca Ferrari, whose sister rented the place at the time.
Even more intriguing is a link to the artist Walter Sickert, one of the leading lights of post-Impressionist art in early 20th century Britain. A search through the Country Life archive reveals a portrait of Sickert by Cecil Beaton, which according to the article was taken at Batheaston House in 1940.
Sickert didn’t own the place, but did live nearby in Bathampton in the final years of an almost unfathomably colourful life which included spells as an actor, trailblazing painter, and possibly even a spell as the world’s most famous serial killer. You read that right: a ludicrously fanciful theory was promoted by the American crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who penned a book in 2002 claiming that Sickert was actually Jack the Ripper. (The suggestion has been widely debunked, and a New York Times review called it ‘sloppy’ and ‘insulting’.)
Such things are no doubt more about selling books than serious investigation, but it's an interesting footnote to a house that Batheaston House’s most recent chapter actually began in 2015, when the place was given a superb restoration by architects Watson, Bertram and Fell — the same people who turned Cliveden from a great country house into a great country house hotel. And a new chapter is about to begin; will it be you who writes it?
Batheaston House is for sale at £4.25 million via Savills — see more details.
