B&NES council spending thousands a year on empty Bath mansion featured in BBC’s Empire with David Olusoga

An unusual legal situation means Bath and North East Somerset Council is spending thousands of pounds a year on an empty mansion in one of Bath’s most iconic locations.

Number 4 the Circus is an impressive townhouse on one of the city’s most famous streets — but the charity which owns it is effectively defunct and the multi-million pound house has been standing empty for years. Meanwhile Bath and North East Somerset Council, which is responsible for the charity’s administration, is having to pay to maintain the asset.

Maintenance on the empty mansion cost the council £18.6k last year and it is projected to cost another £6.5k this year. Separately, the council owes the charity a currently unknown sum of money for dilapidations the building suffered while the council leased it from 1973 until 2019.

A 2017 survey put this at £291,430 — but a new survey will now need to be carried out to bring the figure up to date. Now the council is trying to restore the charity so it can both settle its debt and stop spending thousands on the upkeep of the unused mansion.

The Circus was begun in 1754 by John Wood the Elder and completed in 1768 by his son John Wood the Younger, who went on to design the Royal Crescent. Number 4 the Circus was recently featured in the BBC programme Empire with David Olusoga, where the historian revealed how money from the British Empire funded much of the city’s wealth. In 1768, Number 4 the Circus was owned by James Plunkett, whose family made their fortune owning enslaved people and plantations in Jamaica.

By the 1960s, however, the home was owned by Bath couple Charles and Frances Cooke, who decided in their wills that it should be preserved as a Georgian house and exhibited to the public. On Mrs Cooke’s death in 1970, a charity was set up to own the house and fulfil this aim. Bath City Council was made responsible for the charity’s administration and appointing its trustees despite it remaining a separate legal entity.

Today, the charity owns the house and no other assets and currently has no trustees. Now a committee of Bath and North East Somerset Council — which replaced the city council in 1996 — has voted to appoint four new trustees. A report which went before the council’s charitable trust board on December 9 said: “This will allow the trust to settle final financial obligations and allow the trust to appropriately dispose of the property and be wound up.”

The three councillors on the committee voted unanimously to approve the appointing of trustees “with the purpose of supporting the dissolution of the charity.” Graham Page, who sits on the committee as an independent member, criticised the wording which he said appeared to limit what the charity could do.

The council’s monitoring officer said the trustees, when appointed, would not actually have to dissolve the charity as the council could not bind them to a course of action. The four trustees will be chosen by the council’s political groups in line with the council’s political balance. Although trustees do not have to be councillors, they are likely to be because non-councillors could be personally liable for issues with the charity.

The committee meeting also heard from Avon and Gloucestershire Gardens Trust and a neighbour who called for the Georgian Garden to be preserved. The Georgian layout of the garden was discovered buried under clay in the 1980s and restored to how it would have appeared in Georgian times. It is open to the public from the rear of the property on Gravel Walk.

It had been the Cookes’ intention that the whole house be exhibited to the public, but the house itself has only been open one day a year on Bath and North East Somerset’s heritage open days. In the 1970s, the nearby Number 1 the Royal Crescent had recently opened for the same purpose and so Number 4 the Circus was instead leased to the council in 1973 on a lease which specifically stated that the house could be used “as a museum of costume.”

The house was used as overflow space from the Museum of Costume, later Bath Fashion Museum, at the Assembly Rooms around the corner. It was later sublet to Bath Spa University for the Fashion Research Centre. Despite the fashion museum being currently homeless and its collection stored in a glove factory in Wiltshire, there are no plans to use Number 4 the Circus in connection with the museum again.

The council’s cabinet member for economic and cultural sustainable development Paul Roper (Kingsmead, Liberal Democrat) said: “Number 4 The Circus is a beautiful grade 1 townhouse but it simply does not provide the space or scope to deliver our aspirations. Nor could it be considered as a temporary exhibition space as the costs to deliver that short term offering would be prohibitive and it would also be a distraction to the delivery of the new museum.”

The council is planning to open the new Bath Fashion Museum at the Old Post Office on New Bond Street in 2030. Mr Roper said: “When the National Trust re-possessed the Assembly Rooms, the Bath fashion collection lost its long-standing home. As a council we took the decision to find a new location that would create a new, leading attraction for the city.

“To that end we acquired the old post office site in New Bond Street, with assistance from the combined authority, and we are now developing a wonderful, purpose built, space for this world class collection. This includes a significant upgrade to the public realm in New Bond Street and Broad Street making the new museum accessible for all. This new museum will be of international significance.”