PHOTO BY JESSIE MYERS
PHOTO BY JESSIE MYERS
PHOTO BY JESSIE MYERS
PHOTO BY JESSIE MYERS
STREET LIFE
this wonderful city.” But there’s more to the stunning façades and beautiful buildings on the street. Within what are assumed to be the least glamorous parts of the stores – the stockrooms – lie hidden secrets of their past which customers don’t see. At OKA, for example, behind the scenes you’ll find the original Georgian range cooker used by its 18th century inhabitants, and at gift store Vinegar Hill there’s an incredible basement with the original rooms, doors and fireplace still intact and a passageway leading under the pavement and road. “We have quite a labyrinth of underground rooms,” says Beth Austin, director of the family-run Vinegar Hill. “The street itself is a wonderful, classic place for shoppers to browse. It captures the essence of Bath, with a wonderful example of the Georgian architecture and a lovely spirit.” After 25 years as an antique dealer, and with experience as an interior designer, Candida Molyneux was drawn to open her designer homeware store, Savannah Home, in the historic Milsom Street too. “We love being here as all the other shop owners and staff are so friendly,” she says. “We are definitely a community; I am actually having my hair done at the Claire Brown Hair Salon, three doors down from the shop, as we speak. We all look after each other, which is nice.” The area also appealed to former fashion buyer Arianna Brissi who opened her contemporary-meets-classic home furnishing store, Brissi, in a former Georgian merchant’s house on the street in 2014. “Bath has long been our dream location for a flagship store outside London,” she says. “When the store opened, we knew that our stressful nine-month restoration project had been worth every sleepless night. Reinstating all those gorgeous details hidden behind decades of covering-up was a very humbling experience.” w www.mediaclash.co.uk I BATH LIFE I 73