Sally Lunn's Historic Eating House

Sally Lunn's occupies one of the oldest houses in Bath, a building whose cellar has yielded seven excavated floor levels spanning the 12th to 14th centuries, including foundation walls from a medieval monastery kitchen and refectory. The house's own kitchen and bakery date to 1622, built around a bread oven believed to go back to around 1100. It is this kitchen, along with the archaeological finds beneath it, that forms the small museum downstairs, free to visit for anyone eating upstairs in what the house calls its 'living museum.'

The signature item is the Sally Lunn Bun, a large trencher-style brioche said to have been brought to Bath around 1680 by Solange Luyon, a Huguenot refugee whose name anglicised to Sally Lunn. The recipe has been kept a closely guarded secret ever since, traditionally passed down with the lease of the building rather than published, and the bun is still served today, split, toasted, and topped sweet or savoury, as the anchor of a menu that runs from breakfast through dinner. Afternoon tea includes a Jane Austen-themed sitting, a nod to the writer's own time in Bath. Between the bun's unbroken run since the 17th century and the medieval brickwork visible in the cellar, the building does double duty as both a working eating house and one of the city's oldest surviving structures.