Drew Pritchard said his Drew Pritchard Georgian townhouse bath was the worst house he had ever bought, even after he restored the five-story property in Bath. He purchased the Grade I-listed house for £1.5m in 2022, then stripped back years of alterations to bring it closer to its original form.
St James's Square and 2022
The townhouse on St James's Square had been divided into five flats before the restoration, which is why Pritchard's description carries weight. This was not a cosmetic tidy-up. It was a full reversal of subdivision, with the work aimed at recovering the scale and proportions of a Georgian house that had been buried under later changes.
Pritchard said it was his 13th renovation, and his own verdict was blunt: "This was my 13th renovation, serial house restorer, I love doing it but this was terrible." He also said, "without a shadow of a doubt this was the worst house I had ever bought," which sets the tone for how much had to be undone before the property made sense again.
Bath for the roof line
The restoration went beyond interior stripping. Part of the roof dated to 1791, and Pritchard said he came home to Wales to order the correct blue slate for the roof. That detail matters because the roof is part of the house's profile as much as its structure; once the wrong material is gone, the building starts to read as a patchwork rather than a Georgian whole.
He said the house was stripped while retaining as much original material as possible, using historic building techniques and antique and salvaged materials. Pritchard's account is unusually specific for a renovation story: he was not rebuilding from scratch, he was searching beneath later layers for the pieces that still survived.
Grade I-listed details
That is where the contradiction sits. Pritchard described the place as derelict, but added that "all the cornices were here, all the plasterwork, all the doors, all the original floors, everything." In other words, the house had been badly handled, yet the important parts had not been wiped out. He also said, "Underneath that rubbish that they'd encased the interior in was the most well proportioned house."
For readers following the property, the upshot is simple: the house has moved from subdivision and damage toward recovery, and the strongest feature seems to be what survived beneath the later additions. The sale of the restored Bath townhouse now turns the story from rescue project into market test, with the real question being how much of that restored Georgian character the next owner will value.
