Article on the Bath Arms Hotel, 352-354 Parramatta Road, Burwood (corner Parramatta Road and Burwood Road)

Along Parramatta Road during the 1820s and 1830s roadside inns were established to service the coaches on the Sydney-Parramatta run. The Bath Arms Inn was established on the corner of Parramatta & Burwood Roads in 1834 by James Corner. Corner built the inn for his son-in-law Emanuel Neich. According to Dunlop’s book “Harvest of the Years” on the history of Burwood, the original building was three-sided enclosing a courtyard, with stables and a grazing paddock at the rear. Emanuel Neich was the resident landlord and hotel licensee until 1893. Niech’s hotel license renewal in 1891 publicised him, then 85 years old, as “the oldest hotel licensee”. After Neich’s death at the age of 87 in 1893, his wife was the licensee until her death in 1909, and then the son, Mr. Burwood Neich, managed the hotel until 1919.

In 1926 an article on “Bygone Burwood of Macquarie’s Days” stated that “The Bath Arms was a typical coaching house with the swinging signboard and wide stone verandah. Members of the Neich family held the license for 68 years. Although the front portion of the house has been modernised much of the old building and its stables and coach houses remains.”

In 1937 it was reported that the old Bath Arms hotel was being demolished however the hotel stables would remain, and that a contract was let by architect R.A. Prevost to builders Elvy & Co for the rebuilding of the Bath Arms Hotel, Burwood. By 1943, the old hotel stables had also gone.

The Bath Arms Hotel that stands on the site today, a landmark on Parramatta Road,  is a two-storey brick Inter-war Art Deco style hotel building with a  cream majolica tiled ground floor and a parapet with decorative stucco detailing. The street names of Neich Parade, Emanuel Lane and Neich’s Lane nearby commemorate Emanuel Neich.