
War snes 
III 
Entertainment of Vocal and Instrumental Musicks.—This 
being the only Publick night at the Gardens this season, and 
as the Moon will be nearly full, the Proprietor solicits the 
company and interest of his friends and the public in general.” 
As far as I can trace, this entertainment marks the closing 
of the Bathwick Villa Gardens as a public resort, after a brief 
existence of seven years (1783-90). 
The proprietor (Marrett, Milsom Street) became interested 
in the Sydney Garden scheme, being one of the original share- 
holders in this, and soon after 1790 the greater part of the 
Villa garden was planned out for building purposes ; Sydney 
Place and Alva Street being projected, but never carried into 
effect, to cover the site. 
After passing through every vicissitude of fortune that a 
building can undergo, the Villa was entirely demolished during 
October and November, 1897. 
The house when a pleasure resort had in front of it very 
extensive outbuildings, forming with the Villa itself three 
sides of a square at the extreme end of the gardens. The latter 
were very narrow and extended back from the house to the 
site of the present road on the north-west side of the Sydney 
Garden. The modern Forester Road very closely follows 
the original approach to the entrance gate of the for a short 
time fashionable, but now almost forgotten, Bathwick Villa 
Gardens. 

On the north side of Bathwick Street stands an ornate 
archway, often mentioned as having been the entrance to the 
Villa Gardens. This attribution must be erroneous: the road at 
this point was not constructed until 1826-7. A local name 
for the structure is “ Pinch’s Folly.” J. Pinch, a Bath 
architect, in practice early in the last century, had a stone 
yard close by where it stands, and probably the arch or 
gateway was built by him. 
As the Villa Gardens neared the close of their existence as 
a pleasure resort, not far from them, but on the other side of 
the Avon, pleasure gardens on a more ambitious scale were 
projected. These were later known as the Grosvenor Gardens, 
Vauxhall, and formed part of an elaborate building scheme 
put forward by John Eveleigh, a Bath architect (at one 
time in T. Baldwin’s office) whose numerous works have not 
