Holburne Museum

The Holburne Museum stands at the end of Great Pulteney Street in Bath, occupying the former Sydney Hotel within Sydney Pleasure Gardens. The Grade I listed building houses a collection begun by Sir William Holburne, whose inherited objects span Chinese porcelain, silver and portraits. The museum’s rooms include the Roper Gallery, Wirth Gallery and Brownsword Picture Gallery, each hosting different parts of the collection. The collection grew from Sir William’s bequest of over 4,000 objects in 1882, later enlarged by gifts such as the Blathwayt family’s glass and the Holburne Society’s additions. Paintings by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner entered the museum through bequests including Ernest E Cook’s ten pictures in 1955. Modern portraits by David Fisher and long-term loans like Northern Renaissance works from the Schroder family also form part of the displays. A three-storey extension by Eric Parry Architects doubled the museum’s space and opened in 2011. The café on the ground floor looks out over Sydney Gardens, while the intermediate floors show stored items in a ‘cabinet of curiosities’. The top floor offers a day-lit temporary gallery, and two new galleries, the Wirth Gallery and Schroder Gallery, now present further exhibitions. The surrounding eighteenth-century pleasure gardens remain Bath’s only surviving Vauxhall-style gardens.