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Just when you think things can’t get any better for Bath, the Somerset city comes up trumps again. Last week we announced Time Out’s Best Cities with Intrepid Travel 2026, with three British hotspots in our ranking of the greatest cities on the planet.
Bath proudly took 26th place, with London in fourth and Edinburgh clocking in at number three. And now Bathonians have even more reasons to be cheerful, as further details of the new £54m Fashion Museum Bath have emerged.
Scheduled to reopen in 2030 at the Old Post Office on New Bond Street, the project was previously costed up at £37m. Now, Bath and North East Somerset Council councillor Mark Elliot has explained why that figure looks to have risen to £54m.
Speaking at a meeting of the council cabinet last week (on March 12), Elliot said that £8m of the overall cost came from the purchase of the Post Office building, which was funded through the disposal of surplus assets.
He added that a further £7m came from ‘improvements to the public realm outside and around the new museum’. There are plans for a pedestrianised public square in front of St. Michael’s Church, replete with outdoor seating from the new museum café.
We have a strong grip on the project,’ he insisted. ‘The costs are not over-running, and we have solid, well planned funding routes for the whole project.’
The proposals do sound impressive. There are to be two permanent spaces on the second and third floors of the building, plus a space for temporary exhibitions.
A 100-page planning application was submitted to the council in January, with a decision pencilled in for April. Construction work is expected to begin next year.
The Fashion Museum was previously found in the Assembly Rooms, which had been its home since 1963. In 2021, however, the National Trust, which owns the building, enforced a break clause that required the museum to vacate the location. At the time, a council report concluded that this ‘underground position, in a non-central location with no on-street identity, is no longer adequate for an institution of this standing’.
The following summer, the museum published its plans for the future, revealing that ‘the collection will move to temporary accommodation until a new museum, located in the centre of the city, and purpose-built Collections Study Centre are created’. That temporary accommodation proved to be Wiltshire headquarters of Dents, the glovemakers, with storage costs amounting to an eye-watering £150,000 per year.
September 2022 brought the announcement that the museum would move to the Old Post Office in the centre of Bath. A post on the Fashion Museum’s website explained: ‘The aim is for the Museum and Fashion Collection Archive to open in three to eight years’ time, dependent on fundraising.’
See Time Out’s Best Cities with Intrepid Travel 2026 in full here.
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