Andrew Weltch visits the new ‘Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein’ in Bath
Is it a museum? A pop-art exhibition? A horror show? Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein in the centre of Bath is all of these, and more.
The house is a three-storey 18th-century building, and your ticket gets you a self-guided tour over all three floors (or four, if you count the basement – more of which later).
Up some creepy stairs from the reception area and gift shop to the first floor. The stairwells are decorated with Frankenstein memorabilia and artwork – including wonderfully sensational film posters.
Creaking floorboards, disturbing background noise, muffled voices. Were these other visitors on this quiet January morning? Sound effects? Or was something else going on?
The house makes you uneasy from the start.
The first floor tells of Mary’s unconventional childhood, her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the tragedies she endured.
It’s all done in a scholarly and informative way, but you’re also aware there’s a show going on here – there’s an unsettling atmosphere, and (without wishing to give any spoilers) things may go bump in the night (or day) when you least expect it.
There are four rooms on the spooky first floor – we start with Mary’s origins; then there’s the Phantasmagoria (a kind of horror show) room; the next is about the Publication (yes, that one); and finally, The Mourning Room, where you can reflect on Mary’s relationship with death, having lost three children in infancy and her husband by the time she was 24.
The Publication room explains the connection with Bath. While many of us may think of Frankenstein having been written at the Villa Diodati in that Gothic summer of 1816, it was only really conceived there.
Most of it was written in Bath, where 19-year-old Mary, Percy and Claire Clairmont moved in September that year. The House of Frankenstein is in Gay Street – a stone’s throw (if you’ve got an arm as strong as the creature) from where they lived in Abbey Churchyard.
They stayed for just six months, but what an eventful time – Claire gave birth to Lord Byron’s baby, Mary’s step-sister Fanny Imlay and Percy’s wife Harriet Westbrook both committed suicide, and Mary developed her ground-breaking novel.
Up to the second floor, where things are more theatrical. The Theatre Room which revisits the earliest (1823) stage production of Presumption! Or, The Fate of Frankenstein as well as some later adaptations.
A highlight of the house is The Laboratory, where we are treated to a full-scale model of the creature, as described by Victor Frankenstein in the novel:
“His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”
It’s a very impressive and pretty scary interpretation, looming over visitors in a dark and disturbing laboratory, with its sounds and smells.
It’s a relief to get out to the next room for Frankenstein in Popular Culture. It may sound like a university essay title, but it’s probably the ‘lightest’ and most fun part of the house. Here you’ll find comic books, toys, games, and more – all inspired in some way by the Frankenstein story.
There’s also a TV here, playing adverts, cartoons, trailers and film clips, showing the incredible influence the creature has had on popular culture, especially in the 20th century.
And so, to the third floor, where you’ll find the Screening Room – a quirky little cinema with fold-down wooden seats. When I visited, it was showing the 1910 short, directed by James Searle Dawley on a loop. But it also shows clips from later features and other footage.
On this floor there’s also the Escape Room – an extra attraction for an extra charge. Set in “Victor Frankenstein’s miserable attic quarters”, it’s a puzzle for small groups who have up to an hour to get inside the mind of the doctor and find their way to freedom!
When you’ve finished upstairs, head back down to the ground floor reception and gift shop, and then out on the streets of Bath. Unless you’re brave enough to stay a while longer…
If so, you can head back down the corridor to the door of the basement. It contains a list of warnings on the entrance. If you’re young or easily scared, don’t go in!
I’m certainly not young, and I didn’t think I was easily scared. But …
Well, this place is dark – and not just in its absence of light. The unnerving buzz of electricity is occasionally interrupted by other noises – groans, screams. A flash of light and you may glimpse some poor soul strung up for the doctor’s experimentation, and perhaps you’ll see someone, or something, lurking in wait for you.
I didn’t see them in time. I nervously pushed aside a screen-type door and got hit in the face. I confess I may have screamed a bit, then whimpered something about having to get out! I managed to retrace my steps, and with heart rate returning to normal, I made my way back to the safety of the gift shop.
After a while, Dr Frankenstein joined me (at least that’s what he called himself – a besuited young man, who certainly looked the part). He told me I had only experienced a small part of what the basement has to offer.
The official guide explains: “Enter The Cage, where you are totally alone and try to find your way to freedom through the twisted metal maze; there is no choice but to push past unwilling victims, strung up, waiting for their pitiful end.”
And there’s more: “Next, if you can find your way, is The Cold Store, where a series of morgue-like doors and dark passageways must be navigated before braving The Treatment Room … revealing the hideous live experiment of an unhinged mind.”
Well, maybe next time.
I thoroughly recommend Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein. If you want to be educated, amused, or scared, it’s a super way to spend an hour or so in this beautiful city.
https://houseoffrankenstein.com/
Andrew Weltch is a writer, editor and public relations consultant, whose interests include film and history. He blogs about arts and entertainment and runs a communications consultancy.
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