Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein in Bath – Is it Worth Visiting?

If you’re after something a bit darker than Bath’s usual Georgian charm, Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein might be just the thing you’re looking for. It sits just a few doors down from the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street, but the two experiences couldn’t be more different.

I visited the House of Frankenstein during a recent trip to Bath, and in this article I’m going to give my full review of the museum, including what you can expect to see and do inside, practical information on tickets and opening times, and my honest opinion on whether it’s worth your time and money.

Are you ready? Then let’s get into it.

Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein in Bath – Is it Worth Visiting?

Before we get into the museum itself, it’s worth understanding why Bath gets to claim Frankenstein at all. After all, most people associate the novel with Switzerland, not a Georgian spa town in Somerset!

However, Bath actually played an important role in the novel’s creation, and it’s worth knowing that context before you visit.

Mary Shelley’s Bath

Mary Shelley arrived in Bath in September 1816, at just 19 years old, and lived at 5 Abbey Churchyard (right by the Pump Room, though the original building no longer survives) until the following spring.

Mary wasn’t in Bath by coincidence, or for the social scene the way Jane Austen had been a decade earlier.

She and Percy Bysshe Shelley had recently returned from Switzerland, where they’d spent a famously ‘wet, ungenial summer’ at Lake Geneva with Lord Byron, and where the idea for Frankenstein had first taken shape after a night of ghost stories at the Villa Diodati.

Travelling with them was Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, who was pregnant with Byron’s child, and the party retreated to Bath to keep the pregnancy quiet, away from the gossip of London.

It was a turbulent period for Mary. While in Bath, she received devastating news that her half-sister Fanny had taken her own life, and shortly afterwards, Percy’s estranged wife Harriet did the same. Not only that, but it is believed that her stepsister Claire was in a clandestine relationship with Percy behind Mary’s back.

Percy and Mary married in London that December before returning to Bath, where Mary continued working on the novel. In a letter to Percy from Bath in December 1816, she wrote about having just finished a chapter of Frankenstein, noting she thought he’d like it.

Given everything happening around her at the time, it’s not hard to see why themes of death, grief, and creation run so deeply through the novel she was writing.

The History of The House of Frankenstein Museum

Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein is a much newer addition to Bath than most of Bath’s other literary attractions.

It opened in July 2021, co-founded by Jonathan Willis, with the explicit aim of reclaiming Mary Shelley’s connection to the city and giving her the recognition many felt she’d been missing, especially compared to Bath’s enormous embrace of Jane Austen.

The museum is housed in a Grade II listed, roughly 300-year-old townhouse at 37 Gay Street, just a handful of doors down from the Jane Austen Centre. It bills itself as the first attraction in the world dedicated specifically to Mary Shelley, rather than just the Frankenstein story.

Since opening, the House of Frankenstein has picked up a number of tourism awards and has become one of the most unusual things to do in Bath, particularly if you’re after something a bit different from the city’s usual Georgian and Regency offerings.

The Exhibition

The House of Frankenstein museum (get your tickets online) is spread across four floors, including a rather scary basement (we’ll get into that later).

The lower floors focus on Mary Shelley herself: her unconventional and often tragic life, her family background (her mother was the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft), and the chain of events that led her to write Frankenstein while living in Bath.

It’s a really well-researched section, and even though I was visiting the museum immediately after attending a walking tour about Mary Shelley, I still learned a lot.

From there, the museum shifts focus to the novel’s legacy, with rooms dedicated to Frankenstein’s journey and various depictions through popular culture: film, theatre, and television, complete with props, posters, and memorabilia spanning two centuries.

There’s also a small screening room showing an excerpt from the very first Frankenstein film, made in 1910.

Every room is designed to be multi-sensory, with atmospheric soundtracks and spooky lighting adding to the experience.

One moment, you’ll be passing through black lace curtains and entering the ‘Mourning Room,’ and the next, you’ll be parting what I can only describe as ‘meat curtains’ and entering the ‘Laboratory.’ Everything is really thoughtfully done, and the attention to detail really impressed me.

The Creature

The undisputed centrepiece of the museum is an 8-foot animatronic recreation of Frankenstein’s creature, built to match Mary Shelley’s original description in the novel rather than the more familiar flat-headed, bolt-necked look popularised by later films.

I won’t lie – this thing gave me the fright of my life when I first noticed it! Something that contributes to the uncanny feeling is the fact that the creature ‘breathes.’ It’s surrounded by body parts and various other gruesome bits and pieces, and I spent quite a while in this room taking everything in.

Something that made this part of the museum especially interesting to me was that I read Frankenstein for the first time a couple of months ago, so it was really cool to see the creature as Shelley had intended it, rather than as it’s been represented in media.

The Basement

Something I was unaware of before visiting the museum was the walk-through horror experience that takes place in the basement.

On entering this part of the exhibit, you’ll find yourself in a maze being pursued by an actor in character, complete with sound effects, smoke, and plenty of jump scares!

This was so much fun, and I screamed far more than I care to admit (it was especially embarrassing going through this on my own!).

As far as horror walks go, this wasn’t exceptionally scary, and I was in and out in less than 5 minutes, but it was a really fun way to end the experience, and it definitely raised my adrenaline!

The Gift Shop

As you may expect, there’s a gift shop in the museum where you can buy a range of spooky souvenirs – think gothic trinkets, Frankenstein t-shirts, various editions of the book, tote bags, and green teddy bears, ‘made from parts of other teddy bears,’ which I thought was a fun touch.

The Frankenstein Experience Walking Tour

The Frankenstein Experience is an experience that you can combine with your visit to the museum, and it’s what I chose to do when I was in Bath.

It’s a theatrical walking tour taking you through Bath’s Regency side streets and uncovering the secrets, lies, suicides, and scandals that followed Shelley while she was crafting her Gothic masterpiece.

The tour starts at 3pm and lasts for one hour, ending at the House of Frankenstein museum, where your entry fee will already be covered.

I learned so much about Mary Shelley on this tour, and it was the perfect precursor to my museum visit.

The Frankenstein Experience and museum entry costs £21. When you consider that museum admission alone is £16, I think that combining this with the tour is a no-brainer. 

You can get your tickets here.

Escape Rooms and Parties

In addition to the exhibit, the House of Frankenstein is home to two escape rooms, tabletop ‘escape games,’ and you can even hire the themed ‘Bloody Mary’s’ bar for parties (something I would absolutely do if I lived closer to Bath!).

Unfortunately I didn’t get to experience the escape rooms, but having seen the attention to detail in the rest of the museum, I can imagine that they’re brilliant (and I say this as an avid escape room fan!).

Need to Know

Below is everything you need to know about opening times, entry fees, and accessibility at The House of Frankenstein.

Please note that all information is correct at the time of publishing (August 2026).

The House of Frankenstein Opening Times

Opening hours vary depending on the time of year, but as a general guide:

• Non-school holidays: Daily, 11am to 5pm (last entry 4pm)
• Weekends and school holidays: Daily, 11am to 6:30pm (last entry 5:30pm)

The House of Frankenstein Ticket Prices

Before I get into this section, I want to state that the figures below are estimates.

The prices of escape rooms and escape games vary significantly depending on how many people are in a group, and you can also save around 20% on museum entry if you’re in a group of 5 or more.

• Standard museum entry: from around £16 per adult and £11 per child
• Combined Frankenstein Experience walking tour and museum entry: £21 per person
• Escape Room including museum entry: from £26.57 per player
• Escape games and museum entry: from around £25 per player, or £15 without museum entry
• Museum entry plus Bath Sightseeing Bus Tour: from £25 per person

Under 5s go free. Children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult aged 18 or over, and the museum recommends the experience for ages 12 and up given the darkened environments and effects throughout.

Essential carers may enter the museum and various experiences for free.

You can find all of the current information on the website.

Getting There

The House of Frankenstein is about an 8-minute walk from Bath Abbey and roughly 15 minutes from Bath Spa railway station.

The nearest car park is Charlotte Street Car Park, the same one used for the Jane Austen Centre just down the road.

Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein address: 37 Gay Street, Bath BA1 2NT (Google Maps link).

Is The House of Frankenstein Accessible?

Unfortunately, this is one area where the museum is limited.

The building is a historic, Grade II listed townhouse spread across four split-level floors, connected by multiple short stairwells rather than a single staircase, and despite what the team describes as every possible permitted intervention, they’re currently unable to accommodate wheelchairs, buggies, or prams.

For visitors with hearing impairments, the fire alarm system uses flashing lights, and staff receive disability awareness training, with some also trained in BSL and Next Generation Text. Do bear in mind that several rooms use low lighting and deliberately foreboding audio and visual effects throughout, on top of the basement’s more intense scares.

The horror walk-through in the basement is not suitable for people with asthma, photo-sensitivity, epilepsy, claustrophobia, or heart conditions.

Best Time to Visit

If you’d rather explore at your own pace without other groups bunching up around you in the narrower rooms, aim for a weekday, ideally as close to the 11am opening as you can manage.

With that being said, although I visited on a weekday, it was at the end of July and in the middle of the afternoon, and the museum wasn’t busy at all.

Is Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein Worth Visiting? | Final Thoughts

Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein is an inventive, well-put-together immersive attraction, and I particularly enjoyed the parts of the exhibit that covered Mary Shelley’s own story, as she had an absolutely fascinating life.

I appreciated that so much time was taken to honour Shelley, as many similar attractions focus purely on the story of Frankenstein, with its author falling through the cracks.

While I personally didn’t find all of the movie memorabilia that interesting, I know that plenty of people do, and I also thought that the upstairs screening of the original film was a nice inclusion.

For me though, the basement absolutely made the experience, purely because I wasn’t expecting it and it was a really fun way to end my visit. It wasn’t the most elaborate horror walk I’ve ever done, but I do think that it adds a lot to the overall experience.

If you’re a fan of gothic literature, anything horror, or you just fancy something a bit different from Bath’s other attractions, I’d say it’s well worth the visit, although it’s much better value for money when combined with the walking tour or one of the escape room experiences.

That’s all I have for today, but as always, if you have any questions then let me know in the comments below, and if you’re planning a trip to Bath, you might want to check out my list of Bookish Things to Do in Bath and my review of the Jane Austen Centre.

Until next time,

XOXO

Note: my entry to the museum and walking tour was complimentary as I was visiting Bath on a press trip. All opinions are my own.

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