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A Tour of Bath

July 3, 2019

Our first full day in the city!

We started with bakery items for breakfast, I ran to a Starbucks for some caffeine, then we walked to the Bath Abbey to meet a guide for a walking tour. Richard, our guide, has lived in Bath for decades and has quite the enthusiasm for sharing the town's history with people.

W started by talking about the history of Bath and how the Romans founded it in the first century. They came for resources but stayed for the thermal spa they found here.

Later in the 18th century the Georgians developed it into a place for drinking, gambling, dancing and used the spas to help their ailments. Queen Ann used the spas to help sooth her gout and the city became really popular with the public. The current Georgian architecture is built 20 feet on top of the Roman ruins. You can see the differences in elevation all around the city. Because of the existing architecture, the city will never be able to reconstruct any of the Roman ruins. You can get small glimpses of it though, even in shop floors!

We walked on tour for a little over an hour. We went all around the city and saw buldings and features from all periods of Bath's history.

Because of a window tax from 1696 to 1826, a property tax based on how many windows were built in a house (yea.. England and their taxes..), many buildings have either fake windows or filled-in windows. To tell which kind they are you can trace the mortar line of the stones- if its a straight line from the wall to the window, its probably a fake window. If its off-set, the windows were filled at a later date than the construction. I forgot to take a picture of them though, so use your imagination.

The Bath Assembly Rooms were used in the late 18th century as places for music and dance. Imagine upwards of 800 people in this room, who only bathed once every 4 to 5 weeks! That number of bodies dancing mixed with no real air flow and dozens of candle flames in the chandeliers must have been quite hot and smelly!

The chandeliers are the originals. They were taken down and stored somewhere safely during WWII. This building was destroyed in the blitz in 1942 but was reconstructed in the 1960s.


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Museum Professional. Traveler. Cat lover.

Chloe Wingard