Bath is the only English city built on a naturally hot spring, and the most completely preserved Georgian city anywhere. Two civilisations sit one on top of the other here: the Roman spa town of Aquae Sulis, raised around a sacred spring dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva, and the 18th-century city of crescents and squares built above it by John Wood the Elder and his son.
At a glance
Groundwater falling on the Mendip Hills filters through limestone for thousands of years before resurfacing at three hot springs in Bath, feeding the baths the Romans built here from the 1st century CE. Legend credits a Celtic king, Bladud, with discovering the springs long before the Romans arrived, though the documented spa dates from the Roman occupation. Bath’s other identity took shape from 1720, when John Wood the Elder began laying out Queen Square and the Circus, work carried on by his son John Wood the Younger with the Royal Crescent, and by Robert Adam with Pulteney Bridge. Beau Nash, Master of Ceremonies from 1705, set the rules of dress, dancing and sociability that made Bath the model spa town of Georgian England, and Jane Austen lived in the city between 1801 and 1806, later setting Northanger Abbey and Persuasion there.
Key facts
- Location: Bath, Somerset, England, United Kingdom (51.3813° N, 2.3590° W)
- Roman name: Aquae Sulis, a spa town built around a spring sacred to the goddess Sulis Minerva
- Georgian architects: John Wood the Elder and John Wood the Younger, with Robert Adam for Pulteney Bridge
- Key find: a gilded bronze head of Sulis Minerva, unearthed in 1727, and 130 Roman curse tablets found in 1978, the largest such collection known anywhere
- Status: inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987
History
The Roman complex grew up around three springs, with a temple to Sulis Minerva raised in the 1st century CE, traditionally linked to the local client king Togidubnus. The Great Bath itself followed in the 2nd century, originally roofed with a barrel vault some 40 metres high, and the site included the standard Roman sequence of hot, warm and cold rooms, the caldarium, tepidarium and frigidarium. After the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, Bath passed into Saxon hands following the Battle of Dyrham, and a monastery was founded on the site of the Roman temple, later refounded around 970. In 973 Edgar the Peaceful was crowned at Bath in a coronation that helped establish the unified English monarchy. The Normans moved the bishopric here from Wells in 1088 under Bishop John de Villula, and the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII in 1539 left Bath Abbey stripped down to roughly its present state.
Bath’s second life began in the 18th century, when it was rebuilt as a purpose-built resort city, arguably the first of its kind anywhere: a place visited for leisure, company and the water cure rather than for trade or pilgrimage. From 1705 Beau Nash codified the rituals of the Bath season, the balls, the dress codes and the etiquette of the Pump Room, rules that spread to spa and seaside resorts across Europe and North America. John Wood the Elder began work in 1725 and died before seeing the Circus finished in 1754; his son completed it and went on to build the Royal Crescent between 1767 and 1774, while Robert Adam added Pulteney Bridge in the same years. Jane Austen lived at 4 Sydney Place between 1801 and 1806. Bath was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
What you see
The Roman Baths preserve the Sacred Spring, still visibly overflowing at one corner of the Great Bath, alongside the East Baths with their caldarium, tepidarium and frigidarium and a Roman underfloor heating system, the hypocaust, still visible beneath ancient floor tiles. The museum holds the gilded bronze head of Sulis Minerva and the 130 curse tablets, pewter sheets inscribed in colloquial Latin with complaints to the goddess, most commonly about stolen clothing. One tablet asks Sulis Minerva to punish, with great pain, whoever stole a bathing cloak from a man named Docilianus; several tablets name suspects outright, and some are written in mirror script so that only the goddess could read them.
Bath Abbey, rebuilt between 1499 and 1616 on the instruction of Bishop Oliver King, shows English Perpendicular Gothic at its most developed, with fan vaulting across the nave regarded as one of the finest examples of the technique in England. Its west front carries the carved Jacob’s Ladder, angels climbing and falling on ladders, said to derive from a dream King had in 1499. The Circus, laid out by John Wood the Elder and completed by his son, forms three crescents around a circle with a circumference of 97 metres, the same figure as Stonehenge, a coincidence Wood’s own antiquarian interest in Druidic theory makes hard to dismiss entirely; its houses mix Ionic, Doric and Corinthian orders. The Royal Crescent, built by John Wood the Younger, lines thirty houses and 114 Ionic columns into a single sweeping façade, and No. 1 Royal Crescent is open to the public as a museum with an authentic Georgian interior. Pulteney Bridge, built by Robert Adam, is one of only four bridges in the world lined with shops on both sides, alongside the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Rialto Bridge in Venice and the Krämerbrücke in Erfurt.
Practical information
- Roman Baths: open to visitors, with the museum displaying the Sulis Minerva head and the curse tablets; check the official Roman Baths site for current visiting arrangements
- Bath Abbey: open as a working church and visitor site
- No. 1 Royal Crescent: open to the public as a museum of Georgian domestic life
- UNESCO status: Bath has been a World Heritage Site since 1987, covering the Roman and Georgian city together
Getting there
Bath sits in Somerset, in the south-west of England, at coordinates 51.3813° N, 2.3590° W. Details of routes and timetables are best checked through official transport and visitor information for the city rather than relying on fixed figures.
Nearby
- Wells — the cathedral city from which the bishopric was transferred to Bath in 1088
- Mendip Hills — the limestone uplands where rainwater filters underground before resurfacing at Bath’s hot springs
Sources
- UNESCO
- Roman Baths Museum
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
- Jane Austen, Persuasion
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