Building record MDR10115 - New Bath Hotel, Derby Road, Matlock Bath

The New Bath Hotel is a Grade II building. The New Bath, as it became known, is the plunge bath in the basement of the present hotel. This was opened in May 1745 together with the hotel to its south and utilised the warm spring water for which Matlock Bath had become well-known at the end of the 17th century. This bath is now the only one of Matlock's two 18th century baths to survive. The original hotel was the south and west parts of the present main range. The bath was then incorporated in the building at the end of the 18th century when the north wing was built over it. The resulting U-plan was filled in and rationalised in the mid 19th century and the north wing built in 1885. This fine complex displays its long evolution as a tourist hotel with, at its core, a particularly unusual survival of an 18th century bath with the natural warm spring supplying it still running strongly. (1)