The ancient, world-heritage site, City of Bath

Picking up from Kristin's post, we unfortunately didn't get a sleep in on the Sunday morning, as there were new corners of the Ancient City of Bath that we were anxious to see.

The first stop on our day was, well where else, but a visit to the Baths.

Bath got it's name from three hot water springs that emerge within the old city walls.  The Romans, realizing how nice a hot soak would be after a long hard day of invading, marauding and pillaging, built their bath complexes to utilize the hot waters within their base.  The Romans are well known for the quality of their baths, we saw the remains of a bunch of these when we visited Hadrian's Wall and Custer's Roman Fort near the Scottish border.  It was common to have heated floors, hot, warm and cool pools.  If this is what you were used to, and you came upon a natural spring, flowing with water at 43° C water, you seize the opportunity, and start piping the water to a public bath or spa.

The original name given to Bath by the Romans was Aquae Sulis, partially appropriating the name of the goddess Sulis, worshipped by the Celtic Brythons who lived in the area.

Today, there are a number of hotels that have small spas in the 'basement', which are only for the guests of the hotel, one area, around the original roman baths that you can walk around, but are not able to actually swim in, and just one lowly spot in the entire town, Thermae spa, where you can go, as an outsider to sit in the warm waters and relax for a few hours.

We heard that it gets remarkably busy on the weekends, and the best time to go was first thing on Sunday morning; hence our lack of a sleep in.

We were, however, suitably rewarded for our early rising, as we had lots of open space in the main pools to sit back and relax.  No photos permitted, so I've relied on some from the web to show the baths.

This is the rooftop pool

Source: www.freydefleur.com

Source: https://www.thermaebathspa.com/resources/image_library/92ez92jaff.jpg

And the inside pool.  There was usually a strong current around the outside of the loop so you could float around pretty comfortably.

Source: https://www.thermaebathspa.com/resources/image_library/y0uhu9820b.jpg

Each pod had it's own infusion (lemon ginger, sandalwood, eucalyptus), with a waterfall shower in the centre.

Source: http://grimshaw-architects.com/media/cache/6d/47/6d479081bfc0ce67628f43eac7109a4a.jpg

Thermae Spa only opened in the last 10 years or so, before that time, there were actually few options for going to a spa within the city.

The new facility includes a rooftop pool, a large floating / lounging pool, and 4 different aroma-infused steam saunas.

It was, once again, a very nice way to spend the morning, and to rest our bodies for a couple of hours.

Back out on the street, we made our way around a bit of the old city.  It's a remarkably compact area, in some places only a few hundred metres across.  A lot of the shops and stores are 'ma and pap' shops, avoiding some of the high street billboard names (I always find it strange when you see a Tesco or a Marks and Spencer inside a 300 year old building).

We stumbled into a fudge shop just as a batch was being poured onto the marble to cool, so at the insistence of the fudge-maker, we stayed to sample the freshest sample of fudge you could imagine.  As he repeatedly told us, just four ingredients - cream, sugar, fresh raspberries and white chocolate.  mmmm!

We also had a few minutes before our 'free-city-walking-tour', so we quickly popped into the Abbey.  The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is a former benedictine monastery and remains an Anglican parish.  It was originally founded in the 7th century, then reorganized in the 10th, and rebuilt in the 12th and finally 16th centuries.   My personal favourite part of the church was on the main facade, where carvings of angles are shown climbing what is known as the Jacob's Ladder, up either side of the church face.

The sky was cooperating today... at least for photos... not so much for rain

The inside of the abbey actually looks similar to that of Trinity College at Cambridge University, with the fan ceiling (we attended Evensong, but we weren't able to take photos of the inside).  The Bath Abbey had no such restrictions

A little bit of Canadian infused history here.  During the second world war, the stained glass in this window was almost completely destroyed, blown out during the Bath Blitz.  The broken pieces of the glass were stored in the church during the war.  At some point, a Canadian airman visited, and collected some of the broken pieces, which were then incorporated into a window in Christ Church in Meaford Ontario. 

As with many of the older abbeys, cathedrals and churches that we have visited over the year we've been here, much of the interior space is taken up with graves and memorial stones of people who wanted to be close to God in the afterlife.  Given the age of this church, there seemed to be more than average.  The oldest one we saw was from 1713.

I like the strictly honest man.

This is the 1713 marker.  We don't write like that anymore.

We began our walking tour of Bath at this point.  We've talked about a number of these so far, as we've taken part in them in London and Berlin.  They're a great way to see a city, get your bearings, and learn some very interesting history that you probably would otherwise miss.  They keep being referred to as 'free' walking tours, but in reality, the guide only works on tips, so you're encouraged to give them what you feel the value of their tour was worth.  We're always happy to do so, because, to be honest, the tour guides are usually really good.  Unlike other  cities where we've done these walking tours, in Bath, they're put on by the Mayor's office, and not only is it advertised as free, but the guides won't take tips at the end.

On our tour, we were taken into an area that didn't charge admission, but you could still see some of the old pools of the ancient roman baths.  It's remarkably hard to imagine, but for hundreds of years, the existence of the Roman Baths in Bath were actually lost.  Due to essentially the passage of time, following the Romans leaving the British Isles, the baths were closed down, allowed to silt up, and then built over in successive generations, becoming lost to common knowledge.  It wasn't until hundreds of years later (the early 1000's) when a resident complained of repeated flooding by warm water, that the original baths were rediscovered, and the original namesake was returned.

Today, the old portions of the baths are open for tours, but not for swimming / wading.  It's possible to walk around the main pool, as well as to lower levels where different temperature pools would have been located, and see some of the artifacts that were recovered during the restorations.

The people in the window paid for the tour.

We were shown to the outside of the old (and the current) main dancehall in Bath called The Grand Pump Room, which would have been a social centre for all activities in the area for hundreds of years.  Jane Austen fans may recall it being mentioned in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.  More on Jane Austen ahead.  Today it is a fairly fancy restaurant over the lunch time, complete with a fountain to drink the bath waters (mmm a nice tasty sulphur egg water), and dance / reception hall in the evenings.

The problem with making signs is you need to update them.  I doubt a £2 fine would bother a kid much, when they are drinking a £5 mocochinno-frappa-latte while talking on a £300 iPhone.

I love the columns along the street.

The next stop on our tour was the main spring / pumphouse.  As mentioned earlier, there are actually three hot springs that emerge in and around Bath.  Of the three springs, the main one, called the Pennyquick fault, produces 1.2 Million Litres (250 000 gallons) of water per day.  The waters are collected in the pumphouse, and distributed to the various spas around the town.  The main pump house here is actually located immediately across from where we had a soak earlier in the morning, at Therme.

I'll jump around a bit now with a few more photos of our walk-about.  

We walked through the main part of town a bit, past the Royal Theatre, where we saw the show the previous night.

This poster is a lie.  That show ended last night.

I sneaked these photos before the show started the previous night.  We don't make theatres like that anymore.

Just across the street from the theatre is this building.  Our guide in particular really enjoyed pointing out that this building houses the school of architecture.  As you look closely, it might become clear, they have taken it upon themselves to include in the facade different sections relating to different time periods.  When instructors or students need an example of, say an Edwardian window for instance, they can just step outside, and look up at their own building to find the inspiration.

The walk included three sides of the old city wall; which was truly constructed as a fortification in the English Civil War, when the city was repeatedly the centre of combat and battles.

In more recent times, Bath was one one of the main targets of the WWII bombing campaign by the Luftwaffe as reprisal for the allied bombing of three German towns.  There remain signs around town of the damage caused by the bombing campaign, which claimed more than 400 lives over 2 nights.

This is what the wall would have looked like from the outside, except that the level of the ground next to the wall has been significantly raised over the centuries.

We also made a stop here, at the Hospital of the baths, which dates to the late 1100's.  For centuries the sick would travel here to the hospital to partake in the curative and healing powers of the natural waters of Bath.  Aside from getting away from the pollution of the larger cities, and the R and R, I suspect the rate of healing was approximately exactly equal to that of people who didn't take in the baths, but I'm a modern medicine skeptic sort of guy.  Prior to nationalized health care, anyone wanting to stay at the Hospital of the Baths was required to post a sum of money equal to the larger of; the full cost of treatment and return travel home, or funerary costs.  No sense trying to stick them with the bill.

This is a good example of the different between a restored and a non-restored house.

All of the buildings in the area use Bath limestone, which has the slightly yellowish colour to it.  The only problem is over the years, it can become incredibly tarnished from car exhaust, coal, rain and dirt, and start to look like the building on the left above.  It's a very specialized process to do correctly (since the whole town is a World Heritage Site, there are strict rules around what can and cannot be changed with old buildings).  Many owners just don't bother, while neighbours may decide to spruce the place up.

We don't quite know why, but many of the pubs had this statement above the door.
This would be the exact opposite of an off-licence.

This was the home of the man credited with much of the architecture of Bath,
including designing the Circus and Royal Crescent.

These photos are behind the houses of some of the upper class residences in Bath.
They had just beautiful gardens, and the longest fire-escape ever!

The next two points on the walking tour were the circus and the Royal Crescent.  These are two of the most iconic and most photographed buildings in Bath, after the Roman Baths themselves.  They are two stately sets of buildings, generally regarded as the finest examples of Georgian Architecture, the Royal Crescent in the form of a semi-circle, and The Circus, forming a complete circle.  They are, quite simply, some of the most lavish residences in the town.

My favourite fact about the Royal Crescent is that the original owners only purchased a length of the facade.  They would then hire an architect to complete the remainder of their home behind the facade.  What has resulted is a perfectly symmetrical, polished frontage, and an absolute mish-mash of designs and construction at the back.

The Circus was built in the late 1700's. Throughout history they have housed Prime Ministers, Cabinet Members, and the upper class.

You can see at the edge of the photo above, the centre of the Circus has a couple of huge trees.  This came in particularly handy for us, as while we were standing out in the open, listening to our guide talk about the architecture and history, we looked to the other side of the circus, under the three canopy, and saw a drenching rain start to fall.  We had just enough time to run under the cover of the tree and avoid getting soaked.  Weird experience to see so much rain so close, but not be in it yet.

Bath was also the home to Jane Austen for a period of her life, and is considered to provide inspiration for several settings in her books.  There were several tours specifically to sites surrounding Jane, the places she would have been, and the home where she lived while here.  We actually missed all of the details about the Austen house, b/c we were busy getting this photo.... sorry to any Austen fans out there.

As we were finishing up our day in Bath and had to think about heading home, we made two more stops, one for a Sunday Roast (we're gonna miss those when we leave!), and the other to Sally Lunn's Bunns (not a typo).

The home of Sally Lunn, is also the oldest house still standing in Bath.  It dates to 1482, although it's most famous resident didn't live there until the late 1600s.  The ground and first floor of the house have been turned into a tea room, where hundreds of the bunns are served daily.  In the basement is the museum and gift shop, where boxes and boxes of the bunns are waiting for anyone who wants to take one home with them.  Also in the basement is variations of the kitchen that would have been used over the hundreds of years the house has stood.  There have been excavations done and they have preserved different elements to show through the years where the original floor was, where the next construction happened, and when various ovens and extensions were done.  The Sally Lunn Bunn is a world famous 'pastry' made here in Bath.  It's a large, slightly sweet bun that is usually toasted and served with butter or cream.  The original recipe is a closely guarded secret; think KFC or the recipe for Coke.  We were running late so just grabbed one to go.  It ended up being desert for us the next day.  With some peanut butter, or my new favourite things, speculoos butter (yes, it's a thing), they were quite delicious.

The reserved kitchen of the house.  Signs in the next four photos show which period / appliance is on display

This shows the 4 different levels of floors in the basement.

Just a few more whimsey photos as we wrap up the day.

This tree, in the centre of Kings Mead, was enormous.  We wondered if it could possibly date to some of the history from above.

Not where we had roast, but a lovely pub all the same.

A rarely spotted George VI mailbox to add to our photo collection.

Not a clue what this door led to, or how tall the occupant was.

There we have it, two world heritage sites in one weekend, catching up with some good friends in London, escaping another room, and soaking in the healing waters of the ancient city of Bath.  Not too bad of a weekend in the UK.

As we slowly make our way through the backlog of posts; Kristin writing during her last few days at work, and I during breaks from my thesis writing, we'll share our trip to the Emerald Isle, and one or two other posts on what we've been up to for the last few weeks.