The Bath Priory

The Bath Priory

Down a quiet lane off Weston Road, on the western edge of the city and a short walk from the crowds circling the Abbey and the Pump Rooms, a honey-stone Georgian house holds itself apart behind ivy and stone walls. Built in 1835 as a private residence on land once held by the Priory of Bath Abbey, its pointed arches and stone gargoyles are a Gothic flourish grafted onto an otherwise Regency frame- the house served through the 1960s as a dormitory for The Park School before its 1969 conversion into a seven-bedroom hotel. It grew steadily over the next twenty-five years, and in September 1994 it became the first hotel bought by Andrew and Christina Brownsword, the beginning of what is now their collection of English country house hotels, still run under the Brownsword name today. The hotel now holds 33 bedrooms and suites across the main house and its adjoining wings, with Lindens House, a private residence within the four acres of garden, available for guests who want the staff and the setting without the rest of the hotel's guests. Each bedroom is named for a flower, Lilac, Heather, Hyacinth among them, and furnished with a mix of antiques and contemporary fabric rather than a single period pastiche. The kitchen garden behind its walls supplies much of what reaches the table, tended alongside four acres of grounds that Chelsea Flower Show silver medallist Jane Moore has shaped around a Cedar of Lebanon, mulberries, coast redwoods and a Chinese pink birch. Executive Head Chef Jauca Catalin, who trained under two-Michelin-star chef Michael Caines during an earlier stint at the Priory before returning to lead the kitchen in 2020, serves an à la carte and tasting menu built on dishes such as white crab meat with lime confit, mooli and peanut chilli caramel, with The Pantry and its terrace handling looser, all-day dining. The restaurant held a Michelin star until October 2017 and now carries a standard Michelin Guide listing; its AA Rosette count dropped from three to two in November 2025, a fact worth knowing if the kitchen's old reputation is the reason you are booking. The Garden Spa by L'Occitane, the brand's only spa in the UK, has an indoor pool, sauna and steam room, with a heated outdoor pool open from April to October beside the croquet lawn. Inside, it reads as a country house that happens to be a twelve-minute walk from a UNESCO World Heritage city centre rather than an hour's drive from one, which is most of its appeal and also its compromise: the formality is real, afternoon tea comes with a glass of champagne, and the pace of the place assumes you have nowhere else to be that day. It draws couples marking anniversaries, milestone birthdays, and a steady run of weddings through the garden marquee in summer, and the service leans traditional rather than casual, though guests have noted that the Pantry's informal dining does not always match the polish of the main restaurant. You should not come if you want contemporary design, walkable proximity to every attraction in five minutes, or a kitchen currently operating at the level that earned it its star a decade ago. You should come for a genuinely quiet four acres inside the city walls, a walled garden that predates most of the hotel's guests, and the particular comfort of an English country house hotel that has been run by the same family for over thirty years. The short version: A 33-room Gothic-fronted Georgian house on four acres in west Bath, owned by the Brownsword family since 1994, with a walled kitchen garden, an L'Occitane spa, and Lindens House for private stays.