In the centre of Bath, atop its famous springs and set in a gentle meander of the Avon, you can travel backwards in time to the Roman Baths, forwards to the Thermae Bath Spa, and even stop time in the tranquillity of the Abbey. The city well deserves its accolade of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The centre of attraction must be the Roman Baths, built between AD 60 – 61 and AD 75, possibly as a gesture of reconciliation following the savage suppression of the revolt by Queen Boudicca. The architect is unknown but, while the inspiration was the goddess Sulis, its construction owed much to the Roman military engineers and their drainage works.
Moving on from the Romans, our next stop is the Abbey. Built on the site of an Anglo- Saxon Church dating from 757 and a Norman cathedral begun in about 1090, the present Abbey was founded in 1499, and completed in 1611. Perhaps the cathedral was known to Chaucer’s Wife of Bath – after all, she married five times. Again, we do not know the name of the architects, but we can admire the vision of the builders – and the energy of the angels ascending and descending the Jacob’s ladders, on the two columns framing the West facade, the ladders echoing the Abbey’s web page sub-title “Where earth and heaven meet”.
A leap of about 300 years takes us to the Royal Crescent, the design of architect John Wood the Younger, built between 1767 and 1774. His other works include the Bath Assembly Rooms and, with his father, the Circus. The Crescent became “Royal” when Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (the founder of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst) lived at numbers 1 and 16. The great curved facade is instantly recognisable, none the least because it figured in the televised version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
Staying in this era, go roughly south east back towards the Abbey, and walk along Bridge Street until you reach Pulteney Bridge, which crosses from Bath into Bathwick – the bridge, originally built in 1773, by Richard Adam, likened to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, has shops on both sides – some now cantilevered outwards.
Another leap forward in time and we arrive at the Thermae Bath Spa. Designed by Grimshaw Architects (their other works include the Eden Project and Battersea Power Station), stone by the Bath Stone Group, started in 1997 and completed in 2006, it is an exciting edifice, full of light, air and – water. It’s time for a dip, so climb to the roof-top open air pool – best at night, swimming under the stars, the dark shapes of the surrounding buildings emphasising the night – blue sky.
Outside the Abbey is a decorated sculpture of a pig. It is one of just over a hundred scattered around Bath in the summer of 2008. The pigs join the ranks of the banana lambs in Liverpool, the cows in Manchester, the elephants in London – all treasure trails (for a short while) of public street art. The pigs are Bladud’s pigs – legend has it that this ninth century BC prince contracted leprosy, was forced to leave home, and became a swineherd. His pigs blundered into some spring waters and were cured of their warts and sores – observing this, Bladud submerged himself in the same spring, emerging free of leprosy – and this led to the founding of Bath, on the strength of its restorative waters. The sculpture pigs have names, for example – Bacon Butty, Olympig, Pig-eon (it has wings), given by their sponsors.
To finish – as Jane Austen wrote in Emma – “Let me recommend Bath to you."
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Peter Tugwell.
This article was first published in Construction News Update, Autumn 2010.
