The Commercial Rooms, Bristol were built in 1810 by Charles Busby (an architect who had done much work in Brighton and Hove).

Originally it housed a club for mercantile interests and during the mid-19th century it was a haunt of local prostitutes.

It is now a pub owned by J.D. Wetherspoon.

I was commissioned to carry out the paint analysis of the building (inside and out). Amongst other things, I identified a very unstable sequence of coatings on the walls of The Grand Coffee Room and was able to forewarn the client, which prevented major delays and added expense. The problems had been caused by an earlier use of a bound distemper, which was causing later layers to flake off. This is now recognised to be a problem and I have written about it elsewhere.

Postscript
In 2011 visited the building for the first time since it had been redecorated following my work and was profoundly depressed. The colours selected and their disposition was completely at variance with what I had found when carrying out the analysis. This I am used to, but the crudeness of the decoration came as a shock. I must point out that I had no hand in this.


View Larger Map