Philip Thicknesse was an eccentric man of letters whose interest in Chatterton is an early example of posterity's tendency to sentimentalise.
Before acquiring the Hermitage, Thicknesse lived at 6 Walcot Terrace and then 9 Royal Crescent, Bath. Here he became close friend with the artist Gainsborough. He also befriended playwright Samuel Foote but their relationship was shaky. Rather a difficult man, it seems, Thicknesse rowed, too, with Dr Oliver, inventor of the biscuit, and the Wesley brothers.
In 1774, Thicknesse moves to Lansdown Cottage, known as 'St Catherine's Hermitage'. Thicknesse’s descriptions suggest that it lay but a quarter of a hour’s steep climb from Royal Crescent, 'divided into a dingle as God formed it, with stately trees and primroses in profusion'. He wrote that ‘it commands a south-west prospect, and hangs on the side of Lansdown Hill, and close under the high rump to the north so that we are perfectly sheltered from the sever winds’. Here he discovered some Roman-Saxon coffins, one of which he used as a fishtank, the other he kept for his own burial. The property probably covered about 12 acres of land, bounded today by Somerset Lane and Winifred Lane. He landscaped the grounds in an eccentric style and erected a monument to Chatterton, which features in Ann Yearsley’s ‘Elegy, on visiting the hermitage, Bath’. Thicknesse is the author of Bath guides, including: The New Bath Prose Guide, 1778. In this he is full of praise for the Hot Baths which cost only a shilling. He complains, however, about the smell inside Bath Abbey caused by the putrefying bodies. Infamously outspoken, and with a propensity to scandalise, his guides include advice such as: ‘long life can be assured by regular exposure to the breath of young virgins’.