No. 14 Westgate Street has never really belonged to one person. Not in 400-plus years.
It began as an Elizabethan townhouse. Its first recorded occupant, Richard Gay, was Mayor of Bath five times over. But like the city itself, the building changed with the centuries. By 1694 it had become one of Bath’s principal lodging houses, run by Ms Pocock, a woman whose title stands out in the records precisely because she didn’t need anyone else’s name attached to hers.
That mattered then. It still matters now.
Westgate Street has long been one of Bath’s commercial arteries, and unusually for its time, women appear again and again in its business history. Shopkeepers, textile workers, hat-makers, lodging-house operators. Women who didn’t make speeches about enterprise; they simply practised it.
The street evolved. Lodgings became shops. Shops became hospitality. By 1792 The Grapes appears in the record for the first time. Commerce shifted, but the pattern didn’t: capable people, trusted with responsibility, shaping the place.
Today that continues, not as nostalgia, but as lived reality.
The Grapes is owned and directed by Ellie and Jonny, who look after the building, the finances, and the long-term decisions that keep a historic pub standing, solvent, and full of life. But the daily rhythm, the welcome, the music, the atmosphere, the sense that something is always about to happen, is run by Ellie Burton, our General Manager.
Ellie is one of those rare people who combines instinct, warmth, and steel. Still only in her early thirties, she’s spent years running major stages at festivals, working alongside some of the most respected figures in the live music world. That experience shows. She programmes bands, manages budgets, leads the team, and keeps the whole place moving at speed while making it look effortless. She gives The Grapes its pulse.
And then there’s Charlie, who quietly shapes how the outside world sees us. Since returning to handle our marketing, she’s brought clarity, consistency, and momentum, the kind of work that rarely shouts for attention but makes a measurable difference. Good marketing, like good hospitality, is often invisible when it’s working well.
So when International Women’s Day comes round, this is what we find ourselves thinking about. Not slogans. Not gestures. Just continuity.
From Ms Pocock running a principal lodging house in 1694, to the women of Westgate Street building businesses from scratch, to the team shaping this building today, the story isn’t about novelty. It’s about inheritance. Capability passed forward. Trust earned and given.
The Grapes has never belonged to one person. It has always belonged to the people who care for it well. We’re very proud of the ones doing that now.
