The Assembly Rooms, originally built by John Wood the Younger between 1769 and 1771, and frequently mentioned by Jane Austen in her novels, and by Charles Dickens in 'The Pickwick Papers', were rescued in 1931 from their division and decline into shops and a cinema, by the great Bath collector and benefactor, Ernest Cook (who was also responsible for saving Montacute). After the seven-year restoration of its great complex of rooms by the City of Bath, they were re-opened, but were bombed in 1942. The main walls remained, and so the rooms were restored immaculately and re-opened again in 1963. Bath and North East Somerset Council has used the rooms for the kind of purpose for which they were intended since then, adorned with portraits of its own and others lent by the National Trust.