BROCK STREET - Bath

Completed: in 2018
Extent:  Restoration and renovation of an existing grade 1 listed building.

Number 30 Brock Street is most widely known as the Bath residence of Joseph Wright of Derby ARA (1734- 1797). The artist lived in the building, shortly after its construction between 1775 and 1777.

There were subsequent changes in the 1820’s but more recent changes in the twentieth century including unsympathetic internal alterations had institutionalised the building and its use as offices had caused the interior to suffer.

The proposals included the removal of these later internal divisions, stone cleaning and remedial works to the stonework, iron railings and front stairs to the basement. The modern dormer windows and some of the later windows on the rear elevation were replaced and the ornate plasterwork interior and cantilevered Bath stone staircase repaired.

The stone had been overpainted in modern impermeable paint which, when removed, showed the position of an eighteenth-century shop front, removed after Wright occupied the building.

A detailed programme of plasterwork repairs to the interior together with historic paint analysis and redecoration has resulted in a detailed and scholarly restoration of this once neglected building.