No. 15 By GuestHouse, Bath Review
Why book No. 15 By GuestHouse?
Because this has been Bath’s most creative townhouse hotel since it first opened in 2016 on one of the city’s grandest thoroughfares. Now that the 37-room boutique set-up has had a fresh mini-makeover under a new hotel group, it’s ripe for a visit – especially given that Bath has always been one of the great British weekend-break destinations.
Hotel address: No. 15 By GuestHouse, 15 Great Pulteney Street, Bathwick, Bath BA2 4BS
Website: Booking.com
Price from: Doubles from about £150
The backstory
When it relaunched last year, No. 15 was the first opening from the new GuestHouse Hotels group – founded by the three Guest brothers, who sold a successful family business making widgets. Their mission is to breathe life into city townhouses, and they’ve since added an outpost in a York Regency building, with plans for a third in a Grade II-listed Georgian pile in Brighton in 2023. Their Bath project, in three adjoining six-storey terraces, was previously the much-loved No. 15 Great Pulteney. Seeking to gently evolve the concept, the Guests brought back original designer Martin Hulbert (The Grove, Coworth Park, the Treehouse Suites at Chewton Glen) to renovate bedrooms and reorganise communal spaces, while accentuating his quirky design with coffee machines encased in doll’s houses and a chandelier made of lost earrings.
The rooms
They are a curious mash-up of Georgian splendour and modern whimsy; neoclassical with a wink, or (Non)Sense and Sensibility, as someone described it. In the grandest Pulteney Rooms, there are sash windows and murals of bedsteads straight out of Jane Austen’s imagination (she was a local). But with Roberts radios and Crosley vinyl players, a mod-neutral colour scheme and the odd rough wall, the overall effect is somehow crisply modern. There are lovely little newspaper-style guides, and children and dogs are welcome, with the hotel providing teepee hideouts and instant cameras for kids, as well as dog walkers. The renovation extended previously poky attic rooms – once the servants’ quarters – with walk-in showers. New touches include decorative woollen ‘Do not disturb’ door hangers by textile artist Megan Grace.
