Bath House in Piccadilly was the London residence of the Barons Ashburton in the 19th century. Formerly the site of the Pulteney Hotel, the property was acquired by Mr. Alexander Baring from William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath in 1821 and rebuilt and renamed after the Earl.[1]
Located at 82 Piccadilly on the western corner of Bolton Street, facing Piccadilly, it ranked alongside Devonshire House, Burlington House, Montague House, Lansdowne House, Londonderry House, Northumberland House and Norfolk House. All of these have been long demolished, except Burlington and Lansdowne, both of which have been substantially altered.[2]
In 1858 the house witnessed a marriage of Louisa Caroline as she became Lady Ashburton but by 1866 the Dowager Lady Ashburton relinquished ownership of Bath House[3] and its contents to her brother-in-law Francis Baring, 3rd Baron Ashburton. His son, Alexander Baring, 4th Baron Ashburton succeeded to the peerage and the property on 6 September 1868 and died at the house on 18 July 1889.[4]
Bath House was sold to Baron Maurice de Hirsch in 1890. After a while, it was bought by diamond mining magnate and art collector Julius Wernher. The house was demolished in 1960.[5]
Walford noted that it contained "a fine collection of pictures, chiefly of the Dutch and Flemish schools, formed by the builder of the mansion ... afterwards the first Lord Ashburton of the present creation. Dr. Waagen gives a list of the pictures to be seen here, in his work on Art and Artists in England."
Waagen included the 1st Lord Ashburton in a list of "the most distinguished collectors in England since 1792" (I:26-7) in the 1854 edition of his work, Treasures of Art in Great Britain.
By 1873, the house held part of the collection formed by the 1st & 2nd Lord Ashburton.
Julius Wernher also housed part of his art collection at Bath House (the rest was at his country house Luton Hoo).
On 31 January 1873 a fire at the house burned "until the splendid drawing room and its contents had been somewhat severely damaged" (The Times, 3 Feb 1873: 12). A letter from Charlotte Polidori, quoted in another letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti summarized the damage: "All the pictures except three [Leonardo, Titian, and Rubens]... in the Bath House drawing room are destroyed." The three paintings referred to were subsequently identified as Christ and the Baptist as children (likely by Bernardino Luini, now lost), Wolf and fox-hunt (Rubens, now in the Metropolitan Museum, from the collection of Lord Ashburton), and A woman with a dish of roasted apples (Pieter de Hooch, in fact destroyed in the fire).
Rossetti's correspondence regarding the losses described two pictures attributed to Giorgione, two attributed to Titian or Paris Bordone, and a Velazquez.
From The Times June 13, 1924
A daring robbery of valuable antiques was committed early yesterday morning at Bath House, Piccadilly, W, the residence of Lady Ludlow, the widow of Lord Ludlow who died in 1922.
Expert thieves entered the collection room on the first floor overlooking the Green Park, broke open several of the cases, and stole exquisite antiques of the 15th and 16th centuries. They formed part of a collection which was the proud possession of the late Sir Julius C Wernher, Lady Ludlow’s first husband. They cannot be replaced. In the open market they might, it is estimated, fetch £50,000 or £100,000, or even more.
The circumstances indicate that the thieves are themselves art experts, and it is believed that they will not melt the gold and sell the precious stones individually, but rather attempt to dispose of the valuables intact on the Continent or in America.
Lady Ludlow and members of her family and all the servants were in the house asleep while the thieves were silently working. It is thought that two men were responsible, and that they concealed themselves in the basement before everybody had retired for the night. The treasures were in locked glass cases, which were forced by the hand of an expert wielding a jemmy. Only the very best specimens were removed, and the hundreds of objects left behind were not touched or damaged.
The thieves silently climbed to the top of the house, went through a door leading to an iron fire escape, and, descending it, reached the courtyard at the back, and so got away unobserved into Bolton Street or Straton Street, where a motor-car may have been awaiting them. The robbery was not discovered until one of the maids went into the room yesterday morning.
Not one of the doors was forced, neither had any windows been tampered with, and it is assumed that the thieves entered the house through an open door late at night and concealed themselves in the basement to await an opportunity to go upstairs. No fingerprints have been found. The detectives were engaged on an important line of inquiry last night, and the police at all the ports were alerted, as it was thought that the thieves would attempt to leave the country in order to dispose of the property to foreign dealers.