Orchard House

Kate Arthurs • June 15, 2023

Welcome to Bath! You are probably here for the city’s history. And you’ve likely chosen to stay at Bath Backpackers having seen our reviews. You may have read things you like, but could also be put off by comments about the building: “everything creaks”, “old building” and “lots of stairs” - all accurate. What you probably don’t yet know is that this old place where you’ll be sleeping, eating and hanging out has fascinating connections - to Stonehenge and stalactites, horse hair and orchards, gambling and promiscuity, nuns and - of course - Jane Austen.


Ours is certainly an old building. 36 years older than the USA, it was built before Britain took India, Australia and other countries as colonies; before light bulbs, telephones or the steam engine were invented. Bristol and Liverpool were active slave trading ports at the time of construction. To be precise, the main house is 284 years old, while the archway (which the Kitchen sits above) is slightly younger, built 279 years ago. 


Look above the front door, and you’ll see our building’s name: Orchard House. It is so called because originally it was in the orchard that belonged to the monks of Bath Abbey. If you pay for your stay by PayPal you’ll see that your payment is made out to Orchard House, Bath Ltd. When we took over the hostel, we considered renaming it from Bath Backpackers to Orchard House, but decided not to: Orchard House is a beautiful name, but Bath Backpackers is elegantly self-explanatory, so more helpful for guests.

John Wood the Elder built Orchard House in 1740 and the archway - called St James’ Portico - in 1745, in what is known as Palladian style. He is widely renowned as one of the masterplanners of Georgian Bath - “Georgian” means the period from 1714 to about 1837, and takes its name from the Kings George I, II, III and IV (that’s one to four in plain English). John Wood the Elder’s other Bath building projects include Queen Square, Prior Park and - arguably his masterpiece - The Circus, which he based on the dimensions of Stonehenge. Further afield he also built Bristol Exchange and Liverpool Town Hall. He’s known as ‘The Elder’ to distinguish him from his son John Wood the Younger, who built the Royal Crescent and Assembly Rooms.

Orchard House is located at 13 Pierrepont Street. The street was named after, and commissioned by, the English nobleman and landowner Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. Before commissioning Pierrepont Street he spent ten years travelling in Europe, where he was known for gambling and “loose living” (which we think means he had sex with lots of different people, perhaps paying some of them). John Wood the Elder had grand plans for the terrace this house is part of, but he couldn’t get permission to build the Royal Forum of his dreams. So by the time Orchard House was finished, he grumpily declared it to be “a row of fifth-rate houses of the grander sort”.


Originally a residential property, folk memory has it that over time this place has been used as a home for nuns, a kebab shop, and even an illegal cannabis farm. But mostly it’s provided accommodation, and has been a hostel since the 1990s or possibly longer. Ask us if you’d like to see old photos from the 1990s, or from 2022 taken just before we started our renovations, when the aesthetic style was a heady mix of laddish cartoons, Mondrian art and hippy animals.

You’ll notice that all rooms on the ground and first floors have the very high ceilings typical of Georgian architecture. You might also hear noises between the rooms - some walls are thin, and apparently they are full of horse hair because that’s how places were built in England three hundred years ago. Solsbury and Dundas dorm rooms have beautiful fireplaces, partly hidden by bunk beds, which we may one day restore. And if you stay in Walcot or Solsbury dorms, you’re sharing space with what is called a ‘dumb waiter’ now hidden in the wall - this was a pulley device to move things between floors. We guess it was there to help remove the bed pans people would have used, so they could have a wee in the night without leaving their room - but that’s one thing we aren’t planning to reinstate!

Lots of Bath buildings have vaults like ours - check out bars and clubs Opium, Moles and Labyrinth. Our vaults were used to store the coal that was burned for heating and cooking - with the resulting soot turning the beautiful stone of Bath black (it’s since been deep cleaned, and coal banned). In the Vaults, you can spot several entry points that once were coal chutes. One day we might install a window in one of the coal chutes to give natural light down there - but we have other priorities first. When we moved in, the roof of the Vaults leaked badly, and our numerous buckets filled up rapidly with water. We’ve solved that problem - though you can still see some damage on the ceiling.

Our plumbing and electrics are old and we’re upgrading them slowly, starting with things that could be unsafe, and working our way on to improvements that will make the place more comfortable or more beautiful. We considered fitting showers upstairs but decided against it. We don’t have enough space and, crucially, the height of the building means that getting enough water pressure to the upper floors for more than a trickle of a shower would be really hard. So yes, if you’re staying in the dorm rooms Dundas, Walcot or Bathwick, you do indeed have to go down 65 stairs to reach the basement showers - and back up again.


When visiting the Roman Baths, you’ll see that mineral deposits have created beautiful features where the water has flowed for hundreds of years. Nearby Cheddar Gorge has amazing stalactites formed through a similar process. Because the water in Bath has seeped through the limestone of the Mendip plateau to the South, the city has very hard water, high in calcium. Some people prefer the taste of hard water to drink, but it means that all our plumbing is subject to limescale. The calcium and other minerals that make Cheddar Gorge beautiful create a white crust on our kettle, halt our washing machine, and narrow our pipes, causing blockages. We plan to fit a filter where the water mains enter our building, but that’s a specialist job we haven’t yet been able to do.


Orchard House is a listed building, meaning lots of rules exist about what we can and cannot do to upgrade or change it. There are three types of listed buildings in England: Grade 1 is for buildings of exceptional interest (like the Royal Crescent, the Circus, and Pulteney Bridge). Grade 2* is our status: it means our building is considered a “particularly important building of more than special interest”. And Grade 2 means “special interest” - some smaller Georgian terraces in Bath have this status. What is more, the city of Bath is - alongside Venice - one of just two places in the world where the whole city is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This creates another layer of restrictions on what we can do here.

We imagined removing the wall between the Kitchen and Common Room to create one big space, but specialist guidance said we couldn’t do that as it would damage the integrity of the Common Room. According to a local heritage expert, “the panelling in the Common Room is considered a particularly good example of its kind and age and contributes very positively to the significance and special interest of the building, and to how the space of each room is perceived.” We read her report, spent time studying the Common Room, and changed our minds, eventually agreeing with her: the Common Room is a lovely space and its coherence should not be disrupted.


However, there are some restrictions we don’t agree with. We want to make the building more environmentally friendly - mainly to help it retain heat in winter, so we waste less energy and guests can be comfortable here. Our windows are the main source of heat loss, but we aren’t allowed to put in double glazing. Don’t get us wrong - we are very fond of our windows. Have a look at them in the hallways and kitchen - if you see panes where the glass looks a bit like it’s swimming, it means they are from before the Victorian era. Window panes that are over 200 years old! We love that. But hard choices must be made to stop people and the buildings we use from wasting the resources we have, so heat retention is more important than keeping the windows in an original or very old state.


We also can’t improve our creaky heating system by installing an air source heat pump - now considered the most ecological way of heating a building - because it would visually harm Bath’s harmonious architectural landscape. We are committed to being a part of Bath’s heritage and want to help preserve this, but we think it’s a global-level mistake to always prioritise heritage over ecology and believe that Britain’s national heritage policies will come to recognise this one day. We hope that day comes soon and that adaptation can be made as a choice, rather than forced upon us all by the even more dramatic changes in climate that are ahead.

Back outside, St James’s Portico - described in its building listing as “an unusual and successful feature” - leads through to Pierrepont Place and Old Orchard Street, which remains a quirky little cobbled corner where a couple of boutique shops jostle for a piece of cuteness alongside the hotel bins. Further round, there’s a Masonic Hall which is open to the public on occasional afternoons (John Wood the Elder was probably a Mason). The Hall was previously Old Orchard Street Theatre and back in 1799, in this former incarnation, it was visited by Jane Austen, who wrote about it in her novel Northanger Abbey. You can borrow Northanger Abbey to read while you stay with us, and if you’d like to delve deeper into the themes we’ve explored here, you can also borrow from our selection of local history books in reception. Or check out the Mayor’s Guides - they are volunteers who offer free (yes, totally free!) guided tours of the city every day, which is a great way to learn more about Bath’s history, including the architecture of John Wood the Elder.

While dear old Orchard House will always present us and our visitors with inconveniences - lots of stairs, squeaky floors, peeling plaster - we hope you’ll enjoy its quirks and appreciate its long history as much as we do. We love hearing from guests about how you think we could improve things here, so please share your ideas. And if you can help persuade the people who make heritage rules to get with the ecological programme, then let’s talk!New Paragraph

Why Are You Travelling?

By Kate Arthurs • October 20, 2024
Why are you travelling? When I ask our guests, most people say it’s for the experience: visiting the Roman Baths, doing the Skyline walk, checking out the Jane Austen festival. The idea in the ‘90s, when I first travelled, was to 'find yourself'. I used to mock this ironically - such a cliche! - but the truth is I did come upon personal insights in the deserts of Texas, the glaciers of New Zealand and the mangroves of India. Ainslie and I are making salad together. When you're old, I ask her, what will you remember about your trip to the Balkans? The people, she answers, not missing a beat. She's nailed it - there’s a more profound reason why we travel: to connect with people. Even in the most special of places, you’ll remember the people you were with, more than the place itself. Swimming across the Rio Grande in Texas was special - because I did it with Jane. 

A Hundred Plants

By Kate Arthurs • April 20, 2024
Manu, Maggie and Aymeric are spring cleaning - sorting out the last cupboards and cubby holes that are not yet fully-organised spaces. One goal is putting all gardening equipment in the same place - free Olio plant pots picked up from Twerton, found bamboo canes, and soil rescued from Abbey Hotel 's end-of-summer dismantling of their outdoor planters. Once we have a gardening store, it'll be easier for me and Leia to repot plants that have outgrown their vessels, and in turn transfer into small pots the little sprouts that have sprung roots in jam jars. We have grand future plans - cuttings, herb planters, hooks to hang baskets from ceilings - but first we need to organise our equipment. Our brave shoots of tradescantia zebrina have waited patiently over winter, after I found them blowing around in the street having been yanked from city floral displays by heavy winds or drunk students. Winter is always tough for plants and this year it's been a real struggle for ours. While we closed for building work in January, the lucky ones merely had to cope with daily coatings of brick dust, while those less fortunate found themselves teetering precariously on naked metal bed frames in a lightless Solsbury dorm, in a futile quest for pale, cold light from windows blocked by stacks of kitchen equipment. One little succulent died, likely already weakened by my overwatering.

Remove, Restore, Rename

By Kate Arthurs • November 18, 2023
The dorm room names we inherited when taking over Bath Backpackers formed a chaotic patchwork of Roman emperors, historic local figures, and different words for water that did nothing to offer guests a sense of harmony. People were fond of Jane Austen, and Aqua had a calming appeal, but “you’re in Brutus” always had a ring of punishment when we checked in guests. Julia got around this with, “you’re in the dorm, ‘Brutus’” - rendering the violence of the name a bit less, well, brutal. Still, we decided early on that we wanted to change the room names to make them more coherent and relevant, and while we were at it, we thought we may as well restore and paint our doors too. After six months of planning, designing and labour all rooms had beautifully-restored doors, complete with their lovely new names. Job done, we thought. But no. Only days after we re-christened our ground floor dormitory, we discovered we had given it a name celebrating the worst of Britain’s past. We had to think again.

Beautiful Toilets

August 13, 2023
Every day we try to make things a little bit better at Bath Backpackers. Some days that’s hard - we’re tired, lack inspiration, or business operations just take over. But with collective effort we stick to this spirit of small improvements - better pillows, more charging points, upgraded storage - that make daily life smoother and more pleasant for guests. Sometimes people tell us what would help: a hook here, an extra sign there. And sometimes we’re encouraged by what other people are doing. As we’ve gradually improved our toilets, we’ve been motivated by ideas from architects, cultural centres and local bars, and have applied what we’ve learned by seeing the world through their eyes. Maddie Kessler is a ground-breaking and award-winning architect. Rather than designing the starchitect-style buildings that typically make for fame in her trade, she focuses on what people really need in public spaces, including basics like benches and toilets. She instigated public opening of the basement toilets of the British Pavilion in Venice as part of her enquiry with Manijeh Verghese into public and private spaces. As Maddie says, toilets are important in enabling access to public space. Watershed in Bristol is a cultural cinema and inviting cafe, bar and arty meeting place. As well as hosting excellent film and events programmes, they recently invested in a major toilet refit to make them welcoming and inclusive, ending up with individual private cubicles that are open to all based on function rather than who gets to use them. At Bath Backpackers, we have two universal toilet cubicles on the first and second floors, with male and female blocks downstairs - and for now, that general configuration works alright. When we took over last year, the first floor toilet’s need for emergency remedial work made it one of our immediate projects. The floor listed so much that regular guests dubbed it the Titanic Toilet: you had to use special muscles to sit on the seat, while a gratuitous cartoon of Jessica Rabbit leered down from above. Rather than waste the piece of board she was painted on, she’s now turned to face the wall. Upstairs, once we replaced the toilet itself, where Bath’s hard water had clogged the plumbing with limescale and it had stopped flushing properly, guest complaints reduced to a trickle. And by the time Franco had deep cleaned, meticulously scrubbing every inch of floor, wall, door and all installations, the toilets started to feel ok. But Aris kept reminding us: ok is not enough, we want the toilets to be beautiful. Visiting Budo bar - the new Japanese izakaya on Pulteney Bridge from the team at the Grapes - we were inspired by the aesthetic of their gorgeous ground floor toilet which reuses installations from a family home, matched with animé wallpaper. It was indeed time to start making our toilets beautiful. Julia picked out nice curvy dispensers for soap and toilet paper in a striking shade of orange. We worked out from there with apricot walls, black vinyl flooring, and refurbished vintage mirrors. Then improvements stalled. The first coats of paint weren’t robust enough, so we upgraded with a wipeable version. Our rickety floorboards resisted smooth flooring, which at first looked like a tiny mountain range. And our new lock broke immediately: the company said this was a first, having sold thousands, while we were just relieved it had malfunctioned without trapping someone in the toilet. Guests were patient as we closed one cubicle then another to improve and fix. One by one, we solved the issues and each time the toilets emerged a little bit better than before. Excited to find an off-cut of foliage blowing listlessly around Kingsmead Square, I brought it home, unearthed a jam jar Adam had kept for reuse, and potted it in soil rescued from a couple of coriander plants Eva and Estefany used to cook a shared Mexican feast. Now at home on the shelf Chris installed from a piece of wood we already had, it’s sprouting new growth. Then we returned to Watershed, and before the screening we used the toilets, where a dispenser on the wall next to a bank of sinks invites you to help yourself if you need a period product. If you’re used to female toilets, you may be familiar with such occasionally-free items that make you feel welcome, seen and cared for. But until now Aris hadn’t come across them. Heading back after the film (Barbie - neither of our cup of tea, but brilliantly presented at Watershed by Trans Barbie and Drag King Ken) he said, we should do that. We should put a nice little basket of tampons and sanitary towels in our women’s toilets. I resisted: they’re ecologically terrible products, everyone with periods should be using menstrual cups by now, we don’t want to promote unnecessary sanitary waste. Sure, Aris replied, but not everyone does use a cup yet, and it’s welcoming for women, especially if you’ve forgotten to bring something. I was persuaded. Brushing my teeth in our women’s toilets a few days later, I noticed that people were already starting to use the tampons and sanitary towels carefully arranged in a cute little tray. Watershed’s gender-neutral toilets had made the needs of menstruating people visible to everyone, including Aris. And, prompted by a design feature typically hidden from men, he’d been right to instigate this small but important improvement.

The Swap Shop

By Kate Arthurs • March 29, 2023
If you’re a true Backpacker - one of the literal ones who travel with no more than a bag carried on your back - you think carefully about every item you add to that pack. And naturally, you’re on a budget. But in the seasonally-changing weather of South West England, all this can be hard to square with looking good, and being properly equipped. So we're testing out a potential regular event: the Swap Shop. Guests can bring stuff they don't need any more, and we'll put it out in our Common Room along with unclaimed lost property. People can rummage through and pick up whatever they need for the next stage of their journey. Any bits and pieces left at the end, we'll take to the Charity Shop. We love exchange. Money doesn't have to pass between people for things to be good or valuable. And so, just as the process of exchange can create an enjoyable occasion in itself, the act of resisting consumption, of avoiding endless purchasing of new things, can also bring great pleasure to daily life. We minimise our own purchases, thinking about where everything we buy or acquire has come from, how it's been made, whether we really need it. For Aris this means being a cartoon character. I wear the same clothes all the time, he says, so I'm recognisable. His charity-shop top and grey trousers - once Kate's - create a distinctive look, so he's easy to point out to guests: the curly-haired guy in the cream jumper. Kate's moratorium on buying stuff started during Covid, when she went to meet Aris in Greece, carrying a backpack with two dresses and one pair of trousers for what was meant to be just a long weekend visit. Borders closed, and she was willingly stuck - wearing her three outfits on rotation, and realising that was completely fine. Five months later, we got married - Aris wearing a pair of trousers passed on by his boss's girlfriend, with Kate in one of her two dresses - the white-ish one, discovered ten years ago in a market in Brussels, rifled for five euros in a pile of second hand stuff piled on the cobblestones. Last year, as we organised ourselves to take over Bath Backpackers, thinking hard about what stuff we really needed, Kate realised she had enough clothes for a lifetime. If the small backpack was fine for what ended up being nearly a year away, then the stuffed wardrobe of fancy clothes, bought from classy shops in her previous life as a Busy Important Person, was more than enough - forever. In sorting out her family home she added a few sentimental treasures: her dad's cagoule, brother's shell suit jacket, and a beautiful cocktail dress her mum had once worn. When we uncover things in our possession that we no longer use, we pass them on. Clothes and other objects need to be brought to life and used, and if we're not going to do that ourselves, others can. Julia looks great in the brown jacket Kate no longer wears, and it's so much more satisfying to give it a new life than to leave it sadly in the cupboard. Sometimes, though, you really do need something specific. Julia is an expert on the charity shops of Bath and can give guests personal tips on the best spots to root out whatever they need, without contributing to the endless stream of fast fashion trash. Sometimes she’ll take people to visit her favourite spots for cool, cheap, second hand clothes. We’re even renaming one of our bedrooms Moorland, in honour of Moorland Road in Oldfield Park, home to some of the best charity shops in Bath. If you need something only for the short period of time while you’re staying with us in Bath, please just ask. If we can lend you something, we’ll gladly do that - whether it’s a book, a bicycle or a bar of soap. We’d much rather you help us get best use from the things we already have, than that you feel obliged to buy something you aren’t going to keep using for many years to come. If you’re a bit crafty and want to salvage a favourite item, you can use our sewing machine to restore it and extend its life. Hostels focused only on their bottom line can be tempted to charge for things like borrowing towels, hair dryers or adaptors. They might see good business sense in getting you to pay £2 to rent lockers for luggage storage before check-in and after check-out. We don’t want to do that. We’d rather guests ask us for what they need. If that leaves them with a feeling of abundance, then in return they might decide to share something with other guests, back with us, or with another person encountered on the next stage of their travels. When guests are inspired by the plentiful shelf of Sharing Spices in our kitchen to cook a meal, share it with other guests, and make connections over good food, that makes us feel happy. We’re trying to stock up our games corner at the moment, so that guests exploring The Vaults can find Jenga and Pictionary, as well as chess and Connect Four. We’re foraging in online second-hand forums for the games we seek, and the secondary pleasure of this is what it tells us about people living in different parts of our region. Bathonians (which is how the people of Bath are known) are, it seems, not avid game-players. But it turns out that Taboo is especially popular in Southampton and South Wales, while Risk is intensely loved in Bristol. All our plants are gifts from friends and volunteers - check out the trailing plant from Ana above the clock in Reception, the succulent in the Women’s Showers given to us by Natasha, and the orchid from Eden on the Common Room mantelpiece. Or they are found for free online. Kate loves scouring Bath for struggling plants in need of a new home, while Leia has put great love into repotting and coaxing back to life the more fragile specimens, nurturing plants with foods she’s made from leftover coffee grounds and stewed banana skins. Finding cheap and free resources, and living light, is a way of life for backpackers. We want to help our visitors experience the joy of resisting the consumption trap. And through borrowing, and in turn through offering things to others, in finding profound pleasure in the arts of sharing and exchange. Maybe you’ll see someone wearing a top you brought along to the Swap Shop later that evening. Maybe they will invite you to join them to share the food they’ve just prepared, by way of thanks. Maybe you’ll explore Bath together the following day, and perhaps this will be the start of a lasting friendship. We don’t always know where exchange will lead. But we do know it can create opportunities for great joy.