About Us

Bath Preservation Trust is a charity which is evolving, growing and building on our many recent successes. We are fully independent, giving us flexibility and a freedom of voice and expression and we provide excellent visitor experiences to tens of thousands of people every year.

Our flagship museum, No. 1 Royal Crescent, won gold in the 2025 Visit England Awards for Excellence – it is the Best Small Visitor Attraction in the country. Beckford’s Tower and Museum won gold in the same regional category in November along with a Georgian Group award for a recent capital project, recognising its architecture and conservation.

We’ve got some great projects on the go and in June this year we will be installing a new Contemporary Georgian Garden at No. 1 Royal Crescent, designed by world renowned landscape architects Grant Associates. This will add an entirely new dimension to an already extraordinary Historic House Museum. A new immersive experience is being commissioned to add to the existing visitor offer, and we host a vibrant programme of contemporary art and cultural heritage temporary exhibitions in our gallery.

This year we will be refreshing and renewing an historic Chapel to make it a welcoming, contemporary and versatile space for exhibitions, events and learning. Reopening in 2027, it will be an exciting new venue in Bath as well as a museum about architecture, design and the World Heritage city.

Beckford’s Tower and Museum is a unique folly tower and the highest point in Bath, providing unparalleled 360 degree views. It reopened in 2024 following a complete restoration, and the museum explores the history of William Beckford and his immense wealth, derived from the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people. This is an immense and important story and we work with a diverse community to ensure it is explored appropriately and from multiple perspectives with a focus on social justice.

We hope the Herschel Museum of Astronomy will be our next big capital project. When William Herschel discovered Uranus from the back garden of the house (now museum) in 1781, the size of the known universe doubled. His sister Caroline, a famous comet-hunter was the first paid female scientist in the UK. As we work on an important acquisition for the house, we are focused on transforming the museum to reopen in 2031, celebrating the 250^th anniversary of William’s discovery.

BPT is also the leading voice of sustainable conservation in Bath through positive advocacy and campaigning. We engage with architects, developers, the Local Planning Authority and government agencies to influence change and our impact has supported and enabled the way the city has been cared for and conserved. We see a positive future for Bath as a landscape and nature friendly city where exemplary sustainable heritage and contemporary design excellence provide vibrant and thriving communities.

Alongside this, we work closely with the other cultural heritage providers in the city, celebrating the double-inscribed World Heritage site. We engage with communities, artists, contemporary and historic crafts and people of all ages. And throughout everything we do, we aim to engender a sense of belonging, a sense of place through our commitment to equity, equality, inclusion and diversity.

We hope you will want to join us on our exciting journey of growth and opportunity.