Early one morning…

…just as the sun was rising,
I went into B-a-ath,
To visit M&S!

You have to sing along to this tune!

Into Bath early this morning to run a couple of errands. And what a glorious morning it was! Now that the schools have gone back and the Summer hordes are thinning, town was wonderfully quiet. Bars and cafes were busy putting out pavement tables and chairs, chefs were busy preparing for the day ahead, with the aromas of onions, fish and baking bread wafting through the sunlit streets…

It was only one of my whistle-stop trips into Bath, so I only had time to grab an on-the-hoof shot of the Garrick’s Head, the pub next to the Theatre Royal which was once an inn for actors playing at the Theatre and is now frequented by cast and crew alike. I’ve never been inside so have added it to my Winter Pub Challenge to-do list! Though having found out the following info, I’m not too sure I’m brave enough to go inside!!

 “…the Garrick's Head, one of England's best-known haunted inns. The building dates from 1720, when it was the private home-cum-gambling club of Beau Nash, after whom one of the present bars is named. During his twenty-year stay there was enough mayhem and sudden death on the premises to lay the foundations of a dozen ghost legends. The most durable one states that a gambler killed his unfaithful wife's lover, whereupon the woman committed suicide by jumping out of a window.

Nash's place was connected by a passage to the Theatre Royal next door, and not surprisingly the legends attached to the hotel and the theatre have become somewhat entangled with each other. A Grey Lady has been sighted in a theatre box on a number of occasions, and she is also associated with the pleasant smell of jasmine that has frequently been noticed by members of the hotel staff.

Whether the Grey Lady is the gambler's unlucky wife is not clear. In any case, it is not for its apparitions that the Garrick's Head is noted. What makes this case unusual is the variety of well-witnessed phenomena of the poltergeist type…”  'Haunted pub Guide' (1985) by Guy Lyon Playfair