Future plans for Bath Assembly Rooms

During the excavation works carried out earlier in the project, a number of Georgian artifacts were discovered. Now cleaned and verified we've been able to share what has been uncovered and the stories the objects reveal about the lives of the fashionable visitors who flocked to Bath during the 18th and 19th centuries. Read more about it in this article.

There's now a completed birdcage in the Tea Room. The scaffolding covers the 13m high room, but as it's all freestanding it's called a birdcage. Work will now begin to reinstate the windows, rewire the room and finally paint the ceilings and walls. 

After a long wet winter, the works on the roof and masonry over the Card Room are complete and the scaffolding on Saville Row is able to come down.

Down on the lower ground floor a new screed floor has been laid ahead of new flooring going in.

The scaffolding has started to go up in the Tea Room, once complete, it will enable work to take place that will see the room near finished when the scaffolding comes back down.

The four oval mirrors in the Little Octagon have gone to a conservation studio for repairs and gilding. Oliver Messel had always intended for the mirrors to be gilded when he created them in the 1960s, however, with budget constraints this never happened, so this will be the first time the mirrors have looked as Messel intended.

All four floors of the lift shaft are now complete. Brickwork goes from the lower ground floor up to the second floor where the staff offices will be located. 

A few of the project team went to visit the chandeliers in the conservation studios to check in progress and make a few decisions about the ongoing work to help.

Work begings on building the lift shaft, starting on the lower ground floor this brickwork will extend up through all four floors inside Bath Assembly Rooms.

With all the scaffolding now in place, the builders were able to get on the roof and begin the external masonry repairs. It was a rather wet winter so progess was slowed by the conditions.

During January the concrete floor was laid in the lift pit, completing the works for the foundations of the lift ahead of the lift shaft being erected.

A brand new substation was delivered by the National Grid, cranned over the hoarding and positioned ready to move the property off gas and marks the first step in a greener future for Bath Assembly Rooms. 

Where the cold store walls and the lift were removed, it revealed the original windows which mirror those at the other end of the Card Room.  They had been painted black, this has been removed, the wood sanded and the sashes repaired before being put back into their openings.

Hoarding that wraps around the outside of the project compound has now been covered in graphics. They contain a brief history of the building, information of what's to come and what is happening onsite right now. 

The conservation work on the Long Minuet is complete. Revived and reframed it has been returned for storage. When Bath Assembly Rooms reopens, it will go back on display for everyone to see.

New services will be brought in the Assembly Rooms to provide water, electrics and networking cabling to the building. Trenches have been created in the basement to house these out of site.

The Ball Room floor has begun to come up. All of the floorboards will have the fixings removed and then they will go off site to have the varnish removed, ready to be reused in a new part of the visitor experience.

The Cold Bath has been covered over to protect it from the building works happening onsite. 

Scaffolding starts to be erected around the outside of Bath Assembly Rooms. Eventually the scaffolding will wrap the whole building from pavement level right up to the roof to enable repairs to the stonework and the leaky roof.

Work starts in the basement to create the new lift pit. A brand new lift that will serve all four floors of Bath Assembly Rooms is being created as part of the renovation plans. All excavation works are being overseen by an archaeologist.

With the old lift having been removed, the walls were taken down that used to form the cold store in the Card Room. For the first time in over 50 years, the room can be seen at it's original proportions. 

The former lift which served the basement and ground floor level is removed. When added to the building it was located in the Card Room hidden by the cold store.

As part of the removal work, the team discovered past items left under the floorboards. Mainly newspapers and cigarette packets from the 1960s that were probably left by the building team working at Bath Assembly Rooms after the WWII damage.

Work starts on removing old electricity cables and partition walls that are not needed for the future plans.

At the conservation studio, the Long Minuet is being washed, cleaned and preserved for future generations.

Inside the building, protective measures are added to columns, floors and fireplaces to protect them from the construction work. 

At the end of April work began to mark out the site area and posts installed for the hoarding.

The building closed to the public at the end of February in order to prepare for the conservation and construction works. Bath Assembly Rooms will remain closed until 2027 when the new visitor offer opens.

Bath Assembly Rooms launches a new fundraising campaign the 'Luminaries'. For £250 individuals can support the project work in exchange for a number of benefits including behind the scene project updates. View the Luminaries page for more details.

Luke Jerram's latest artwork Helios was unveiled at Bath Assembly Rooms. A new 7-metre diameter sculpture of the sun. Helios is the last time Bath Assembly Rooms will open to the public before the construction work begins. 

Each of the ten original Georgian chandeliers were carefully dismantled, cleaned, inspected and labelled before being boxed up. They will now begin a journey to restore failing repairs, rewiring and restoration before coming back to the Assembly Rooms ready for the new visitor experience.

All chandeliers were given one more clean for 2024. As they're done every six months, this was the last clean for the year. Once again the building opened to the public, so visitors had the opportunity to see them whilst lower to near floor level.

Contractors finished onsite after stripping back walls and ceilings in the basement to reveal the original architecture. With the work finished we launched the start of specialist event tours with the behind-the-scenes hard hat tours.

Ten original chandeliers hang in the Assembly Rooms and twice a year they are lowered to ground level for a deep clean and conservation. In January, we opened the doors for visitors to watch the process and see the chandliers whilst on the ground. During this clean, the conservators took a full condition report to maintain the lights for years to come.

In November contractors started onsite to complete four months of work taking out the partition walls and false ceilings to reveal original stonework of the lower ground floor.

Over the past few months a team of archaeologists uncovered an original Cold Bath situated on the lower ground floor, the annoucement of the discovery was accompanied by the launch of hard hat tours to allow visitors to see the bath.

We're testing the building to see how large scale events work in the spaces to inform future plans. Forest of Imagination built 'Assemble in the Forest' taking over the whole ground floor with a contemporary art event open to schools and the public.

We've got the keys to the building, and will spend the next few years getting under the skin of this significant historic building to develop an immersive Georgian experience for the future. There'll also be opportunities to explore the building through an exciting programme of events.