The History of Bathwick

In 1851, Thomas Cook organized his first excursion abroad. Having been declared bankrupt six years earlier, it was something of a phoenix operation and flew in the face of a fact clear to everyone around him, viz. that he had no head for business. But Cook was above such considerations. He saw his mission as both a social and a religious mission. He would help Britons to see the world for their spiritual and intellectual benefit.

He took a group from Leicester to Calais, and onto Paris for the Paris Exhibition. He was struck by the art at the Exhibition, and vowed that one day he would collect such art. The following year he started his “grand circular tours” of Europe, and the company he set up with his son John became the best-known travel company in the world.

Bath – and in particular Bathwick – benefits from the commercial success of Thomas Cook & Son, in particular from the real moneyspinner of the operation: the genius innovation of the “circular note” – better known as traveller’s cheques. Cook’s grandson Ernest bequeathed ten pictures to the Holburne Museum, among them works by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner.