Elizabeth Linley, whose family lived at No. 11 Royal Crescent from 1771, later eloped with the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Today a room in the hotel at Nos. 15 and 16 shares his name, and weddings are held in the house, in a walled garden and, for larger parties, under a marquee on the lawn.
The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa offers a ceremony in the first crescent of terraced houses ever built in Britain, a Georgian house in the centre of Bath whose history runs through a wedding there.
The first crescent in Britain
John Wood the Younger designed the Royal Crescent, a row of 30 terraced houses built between 1767 and 1774 on land bought from Sir Benet Garrard in December 1766. It was the first crescent of terraced houses built in Britain. The curve is about 500 feet long, and the front carries 114 Ionic columns on the first floor, each about 47 feet tall, beneath a Palladian entablature. The houses are built of Bath stone, and a ha-ha, a sunken boundary wall, separates the upper and lower lawns without blocking the view from Royal Victoria Park. The crescent has been Grade I listed since 1950.
The design has a trick that Bath likes to quote. Each original buyer purchased a section of the uniform front and then hired their own architect to build the house behind it, so the rear of the crescent varies in roof heights and windows. The local saying describes the result as Queen Anne fronts and Mary Anne backs.
The house at the centre
The hotel occupies the central part of the crescent. Elizabeth Montagu, the founder of the Blue Stockings Society, used No. 16 for her gatherings, and the hotel’s restaurant, Montagu’s Mews, shares her name. Francis Burdett lived at No. 16 from 1814 to 1822. Other houses in the crescent had their own residents. The Linley family lived at No. 11 from 1771, the abolitionist William Wilberforce stayed at No. 2 in 1798, and Isaac Pitman, the inventor of Pitman shorthand, lived at No. 17 in the 1880s.
The twentieth century was less kind. During the Bath Blitz of the Second World War incendiary bombs gutted Nos. 2 and 17, and after the war a council plan to turn the crescent into offices was not carried out. In 1971 Nos. 15 and 16 were combined to form the Royal Crescent Hotel. It was sold in 1978 and restored, and No. 1 next door is now a museum run by the Bath Preservation Trust.
A street with a reputation
The street was first called simply The Crescent, and the prefix Royal is said to date from the late eighteenth century, after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, stayed there. Its influence reached further than Bath. In 1921 the architect Robert Tor Russell drew on it for Connaught Place in New Delhi, and a dig for the television programme Time Team in 2003 found the remains of a Roman wall behind the crescent.
The crescent has also had a long second career as a film set. Persuasion in 2007, The Duchess in 2008 and Bridgerton from 2020 all used the crescent or its hotel as a location, and in The Wrong Box in 1966 it stood in for London. A resident of No. 22 painted the front door yellow in the 1970s, and a court case followed, which ended when the Secretary of State for the Environment ruled that it could stay yellow.
Ceremonies in the house and the garden
Civil ceremonies and civil partnerships take place in the Library, the Sheridan Room, the Sir Percy Blakeney Suite, Montagu’s Mews or the walled Wedding Garden, where an iron pergola stands among honeysuckle and roses. The ceremony rooms take between 20 and 50 guests. The Library holds up to 20, the Sheridan Room, the Sir Percy Suite and the Wedding Garden 30, and Montagu’s Mews 50.
For couples who want something smaller, the hotel offers micro weddings and elopements. A proposal or elopement in the Library or the Sheridan Suite starts from £700, and a ceremony room for a micro wedding starts from £750 in the Library for up to 20 guests, £850 in the Sheridan Suite for up to 30, £1,565 in the Sir Percy Suite for up to 30, and £3,200 in the Garden Villa Courtyard for up to 30. The Garden Villa, a private residence with its own walled garden, sleeps eight adults and two children and opens onto the Wedding Garden.
The whole hotel for the weekend
For a larger party the hotel can be taken for exclusive use, which gives the wedding the bedrooms, Montagu’s Mews, the spa and the gardens from 3pm on the day of arrival until noon on the day of departure. A marquee on the lawn then seats up to 120 guests for the wedding breakfast. Exclusive use starts from £25,000 a night.
At the table
Montagu’s Mews holds three AA Rosettes and is the hotel’s restaurant and bar, and it takes up to 50 guests for a ceremony, drinks or a wedding breakfast. Wedding breakfasts are three to five courses, with a menu tasting for the couple. The Camden package starts from £165 per person and includes a glass of Champagne on arrival, three canapés, a three course wedding breakfast, half a bottle of house wine and a toast. The Cavendish package, from £200, adds a fourth course, and the Royal package, from £230, a fifth, with the wine chosen by the sommelier. Prices include VAT, and a discretionary service charge of 12.5 per cent is added.
Staying in the crescent
The hotel has 45 rooms and suites above one acre of private gardens. The rooms range from Classic Rooms at the rear of the building to Heritage Rooms with views across the lawn, the garden or the city, and from Deluxe Suites with four poster beds to family suites and Master Suites with panoramic views and period features, among them the Sir Percy Blakeney suite.
The Spa & Bath House is a Georgian bath house with a spa pool, treatments and a spa garden,.
Planning your wedding
Bath Spa station is a nine minute taxi ride or an 18 minute walk from the hotel, with trains from London Paddington taking about 1 hour 20 minutes. Bristol Airport is 40 minutes away by car. Guests who arrive early can visit No. 1 Royal Crescent, a historic house museum run by the Bath Preservation Trust at the end of the terrace, to see a Georgian house of the same period. Ceremony rooms are licensed for civil ceremonies, and couples should ask the hotel which room is available for their date and how many guests it holds.
A wedding in a famous street
The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa suits couples who want a Georgian setting in the centre of Bath, parties from a handful of guests to 120, and a story worth telling their guests. The smaller ceremony rooms suit a close family wedding, and exclusive use suits a larger house party.
See the Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa profile, read the Royal Crescent issue of the magazine or browse wedding venues in the United Kingdom. When you are ready, Check your date.
