VISIT BATH.

Pulteney Bridge + The Holburne Museum.

Yesterday the 21st of February 2025 as I was going to Bath anyway I decided to do a Visit Bath. It was steadily raining most of the afternoon. I got off the bus from Kingswood at Bath bus station and got on the 231 Chippenham bus that saved me a short walk and dropped me at the bus stop just up from The Abbey and across from Bath Guildhall,in Broad st (the A3039). I've included the bus stop in this picture of the Abbey.Turn around (right side) down to your right is Bridge st leading to Pulteney Bridge where we are going. The church with the tall needle spire is St Michaels church and behind us the district of Walcot which is quite boho and cooler for shopping than mainstream Southgate Centre but as I've got no spare money to shop anywhere it's all one to me

After handily returning a library book I turned back and took that right (or left ) turn down Bridge at.

This road has now I saw become a Jewelry street. Each shop except the end one was a high value Jewelry shop. This shop and cafe had a delicious array of Portuguese custard tarts

Across from the Portugese tasty treats shop is the City Art Gallery, the Victoria Art Gallery. But the galleries are closed until after Easter for refurbishment. A to pay for exhibition of 18thC satire cartoons is in the side gallery off the gift shop

At last,weve’ got to Pulteney Bridge. There were more people about than you see in my photos but in summer it can be really heaving. This is a rare survival of those old city bridges lined with shops. The shops along here have changed,come and gone over the years. Now the left side seems to be mostly more high end jewellers + cafes on the right

.I loved this beautiful jewelry in one shop window. It's unpriced so that means I can't afford it

Great Pulteney Street is a splendid wide boulevard,it's very Jane Austen ( she detested Bath) and very grand. It's is focused on this splendid building and is straight as a die. At the junction with Henrietta st was this text so I went closer to find it was words of boxing champion and humanitarian Mohammed Ali

.Further down Great Pulteney St at the corner with Edward st was this lovely assemblage of flourishing plants are more round the corner. I investigated and found it's a hotel. Dukes Hotel. If the hotel is as well maintained as the plant displays it must be a good place to stay. I spotted two plaques,there are probably more,an Admiral Lord Howe lived on this street and the French Emperor of Zola's time but before he was stayed in a house here in 1846.

Finally,at the Holburne Museum,in that impressive building at the end of the boulevard. My first stop was the cafe which was packed as it was wet outside. A path leads up into the Sydney Gardens and there is a canalside path along the Kennett and Avon Canal to Bathampton ( and beyond). From the cafe I saw the colour and went out to investigate. It was a most impressive planting of Hellebores,but not the manky green ones. White and Purple made a great show here

.There was a fuzzy,misty like yellow tree so I went over to investigate. This beautiful tree covered in fuzzy fragile looking flowers, think it's Cornus mas but I've never grown it. Now for inside the Museum

.left side: this is 11 year old Henrietta Laura Pulteney who inherited all the land round about and had this elegant high end residential area built. Picture painted by Angelica Kauffman. Origin of family wealth,plantations in the Caribbean natch,pretty much same for every portrait in this collection. Right top,I just liked this fireplace. I actually recall fireplaces like that! Bottom right: David Garrick and and his wife Susannah Cibber in a ‘Murder and Mayhem in Venice ‘ play. A real barnstormer

Shrewd faces. Father and Son. Both called John Sargent. Dad a grocer from Plymouth who got involved in Naval Accountancy and developed trade links with pre- Independence North America,he died in 1760. Son was in the Navy Office,a Member of Parliament and in 1757 Governor of the Bank of England. And,natch,involved with commercial interests in the Slave Trade. Both painted by Allan Ramsay

.This picture has so much impact it just smacks you in the face! It's not even the finished picture but a study. The painter of it was Sir Thomas Lawrence who was a child prodigy. His parents kept a Coaching Inn on a part of Old Market in Bristol that doesn't exist any more. Little Thomas took to drawing little caricature pictures of the coach passengers as they are their meal or conversed or even slept and soon his canny Dad was inviting passengers (with money) to buy a likeness that would be drawn by his cute six year old.

This boy with the rock star looks and sexy intensity is 19 year old Arthur Atherley 1722 - 1844,just left Eton.

Here is an 1830 Skeleton Clock. Top right : miniature portrait of Eugene de Beauharnais,son of the Empress Josephine (by her first husband),a French Statesman. Bottom right: Prince Albert of Austria,yet another Hapsburg.

The last picture is of details from two Breughel pictures in the museum but they materialized above in the wrong place. Top left is the two rather crushed looking musicians pushed against the tree by the rowdy dancers at the village wedding. The other three pictures show some respectable bourgeois citizens visting a humble peasant family with a gift and some money. It's as busy picture with a lot going on. And the Mum is as ever multi-tasking!

Well,it took me longer to assemble and organize this essay plus post it than the actual doing the visit or it feels that way.

Another Visit Bath soon.