Just a few more things to show you around Bath and then I'll shut up. If you visited Bath you would no doubt be gawking, as I did, at the Bath Abbey,
the Empire Hotel (way too big for me to get all of it into a single shot), Pulteney Bridge
with its quaint little shops
and the Avon River.
I will also mention a pub called the Saracens Head, where Charles Dickens is said to have sat making notes about the people of Bath which he later used in his Pickwick Papers. We went in and found it, as written, virtually unchanged since 1713, including the smell and the low beamed ceilings; they had, however added a big screen TV. A horrible place.
Bill found The Old Green Tree,
one of the tiniest pubs I've ever seen. It was obviously very old but with beautifully crafted wood everywhere and very friendly
Continental staff. I had to laugh when they crossed out one of the offerings on the board and replaced it: I told Bill they lost their Innocence (4%) to Dark Delights (5.5%).
We stayed in an inexpensive Holiday Inn Express just south of the river and it turned out there were 3 bridges across within a relatively short distance, one of which took us through the former Green Park train station which, like Tynemouth Metro, has a market on Saturdays. I ended up buying one of those tea strainer sets from this amazing market with hard wood floors.
We also visited the Bath Markets,
which turned out to be much like Grainger Market in Newcastle.
It was a great building.
One of the main things Bill wanted to see – the first thing we set out to find, in fact, is the Royal Crescent.
I'm sure there are a million better pictures of it online that I could manage to get on that day.
Sadly, the museum at No. 1 was shut until mid-February.
I don’t know that we’ll return to Bath unless we happen to get into the Bath Half, which is considered a good race. It fills up pretty quickly; yes, that was a pun on the name -- you can thank Bob for it -- but true, nevertheless. Others I saw including a shop selling running kit, called Bath Running and a pub called the Bath Tap.
We finished the guided walking tour our last morning. Just before we headed to the train station, we passed an amazing French woman who was busking. Buskers are common enough around the streets of Britain, but you don't normally hear opera being sung on street corners. We were both impressed enough to put money in her basket.
For lunch, we had the remainders of the previous evening’s feast sitting on a bench by the river, overlooking some of Brunel’s engineering. I was reminded of the story in our tour booklet about Queen Victoria having snubbed the city of Bath by staying on her train and passing through, though the city had spent all sorts of money preparing for her arrival. The story I found later on the internet is that she had opened a park there as a child, aged 11. The wind blew her dress up and she overheard someone say she had fat legs. Apparently she never forgave the city for that remark.
If you want more pictures of Bath, there is this lovely blog written by people who are lucky enough to actually live there!
We made our way home on the Sunday, via train, bus, plane and metro, only to find our central heating boiler was broken. We sat and ate cheese and crackers huddled in front of the fire in the living room. Fortunately, the repairman came the next evening. On that Monday I kept moving to stay warm and got a lot of housework done!
You might have noticed we didn’t visit the tea shoppe at the Jane Austen Centre. This was because Bill had another one targeted. Sally Lunn’s house is declared the oldest remaining house in Bath, dated 1482. I read somewhere that her surname might have come from Cockney rhyming slang, but it's beyond me to explain that to you. You'll have to investigate that for yourself if you're interested. Might be a nice way to drive your teenagers mad, if you had any and were so inclined; you could begin simply by yelling "Get off that dog and bone [phone]!"
Anyhow, we were sent up the narrow stairs to a room with low, beamed ceilings, a large fireplace at one end and packed with tables full of people. We ordered tea, which came loose in a pot with hot water and with an additional pot with just hot water, just as one would get in Newcastle, except with tea bags. As there was loose tea, a small metal bowl with a strainer that sits inside was also available. One poured the tea through the strainer into one’s cup and the bowl was to catch the drips or for the strainer to be emptied and re-used.
I ordered a Sally Lunn bun (bunn?) and Bill ordered a Jane Austen bun; the only difference I could tell was that I got strawberry and he got raspberry preserves. They were each a half of a plate-sized hamburger bun, soaked with butter and toasted. They both came with the preserves and with a small bowl of clotted cream, which I’d not had before. It tastes much like ice cream might without any sugar; very slightly sweet and very extremely rich. I ate everything they put in front of me, it was so delicious. Then, perhaps because all the paraphernalia was so entertaining and the waitress offered more hot water, I drank far too much tea.
After that we went down to the kitchen museum cum shop. Exhibits included the old ‘faggot’ oven, faggot being a
bunch of sticks, though I took a picture in a butcher shop window of another type of faggot to show you; something to do with meat and intestines, according to Bill. Yum!
One wonders about the etymology of that word, huh? There were also remnants of an archeological dig under that house. I got the idea that if one dug down a few inches under any sort of pavement in Bath there would be Roman ruins or historical artifacts of some sort.
I had a major tummy ache by the time we got back to the hotel that evening, whether due to rich food or acidic tea, I don’t know. After we’d had a nap we both felt better, but still pooped. We decided that Bill would go into Sainsbury’s near by (just past Homebase) and get some snack food for dinner; I asked him to find ‘something healthy’ as well. This turned out to be a good decision as the skies later provided torrential, horizontal rain. This was of benefit the next day, mind, as it got rid of the rest of the ice.
We had a feast of wide, herby flavoured bread sticks, dipped in red pepper hummus or cream cheese, bean salad and some couscous with chargrilled vegetables. That’s Sainsburys for you – right posh food.
After seeing the Jane Austen Centre we only had one other idea about where to go in Bath, so we located the tourist information centre to see what they had to suggest. I admit to having got caught up looking at all sorts not specific to Bath (art deco cards, fridge magnets, etc.) but did find a little booklet about the City Trail, so we set about following that. It had all sorts of historical tidbits in, such as, referring to the Cross Bath, where there was a gallery from which one could look down upon the women bathing below:
One custom during the 17th century was to dip pieces of bread into a glass of wine to improve its flavour [I've seen a couple of young men do this once in a restaurant in Cinque Terre, Italy]. The story is told that during the reign of Charles II, whilst a celebrated beauty was bathing, a spectator stepped forward, dipped his goblet into the water and drank the lady's health. This prompted his lusty companion to jump fully clothed into the bath and declare 'since he liked not the liquor he would have the toast!' From that moment the tradition of toasting a beautiful lady to improve the flavour became the fashion.
We walked along quite a bit of Bath that we'd already seen, but the booklet told us things we wouldn't already have known. For example, at Queen's Square,
the Obelisk (that word always makes me think it should be a round object, but of course it is not) there is to mark the visit of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1738. The booklet quotes his mother, Queen Caroline as saying,
My dear first-born is the greatest ass, the greatest liar and the greatest beast in the whole world and I heartily wish he was out of it.
So much for a mother's love. It made me curious to know more about Frederick.
We learned about the Bath Chair being the demise of the Sedan Chair, though I gather the latter were privately owned and therefore more luxurious; sort of the difference between having a car and taking a taxi. However, less expensive because only one person was required to provide locomotion.
Walcot Street continues along the riverside to the North East of the touristy area of Bath and is apparently the older
-- as in 500 AD -- part of Bath, except that they probably didn't consider themselves part of Aquae Sulis. The book describes and fountain and some vineyards which of course are gone.
This apparently was also the business district and 'Walcot' means 'city of foreigners'. This road becomes London Road which was once the main road into that capitol. Like many other riverside areas in the UK, being so close to industry it became the place for the poor to live. Still, the terraced houses look pretty grand to me.
St. Swithin's church, where Jane Austen's parents were married, can be found here. Along with funny little shops
that had I not travelled via Easy Jet with carry on luggage only, I might have investigated further. I was wishing we had something like The Makery in Newcastle, as I'm desperate to learn to sew better.
Bill and I found lots to photograph. We both liked the front of this building, designed specifically to allow carriages to turn.
*Austen, that is.
The celebrated novelist was once a resident of Bath, so of course they have a Jane Austen Centre for tourists to visit. This museum / tea house / shop is at #40 Gay Street, a house similar to #20-something on the same street, where Jane lived at one time.
I was rather startled by a statue near the entrance!
After purchasing a ticket in the shop, one is sent upstairs to wait in a room for a guide to come up and give a lecture. There are various drawings and silhouettes depicting how Jane might have looked, depending upon the skill or lack of her sister, Cassandra, who did her watercolour portrait from which there have been various other interpretations; also a sampler that Jane worked and various other items.
Bill and I both thought the museum had got rather caught up with modern media as various scenes showing Emma Thompson and Colin Firth were about. Whoever stocks the shop also apparently fancies Mr. Darcy something awful. I was quite tempted by Jane Austen’s Sewing Book, full of projects as mentioned in her novels; also by the old fashioned pens but then I realized they were a sharp object likely to be banned by airport security, and so I managed to escape without buying anything.
I thought the lecture was the best part of the museum, but there was a lot to see as well. The film on the website linked above shows quite a bit of it, so I've not added pictures that are of the same. [Be sure to spot the Bath Bun in the tea shop!] In addition to examples of various styles of everyone's dress there was information about card playing and pipe smoking, a display of one of Jane’s letters to her sister, bits about social customs and an explanation of ‘language of the fan.’ There was a discussion of the custom of taking tea at the Assembly Rooms:
Tea at the Assembly Rooms was served at 9pm in the Tea Room. It was rumoured that they used the tea three times over; they were sold to the guests first, then dried out and sold to the staff. Finally, they were dried out again and sold to the general public!
Bill manages to throw away my tea bags before I even have a chance at a second use!
Like a good student, I took notes during the lecture. In checking with other sources, to clarify some of those notes, I find there is conflicting information, so best not rely too much on the details! Still, I really enjoyed the lecture and so will share my version of it:
Two of Jane’s novels are set in or feature Bath, and I'm looking forward to re-reading them to see what I can recognize from our visit. When she wrote Northanger Abbey, in 1797, she’d visited Bath and liked it. In her last novel, Persuasion, written 18 years later when she had lived there, she didn’t much care for Bath at all.
Jane was a writer from an early age, having written at age 11 a book called History of England (without many dates, she says). I flipped through a copy which seemed even at that early age to take a satirical view of a list of historical figures.
Jane was born in 1775, the 7th of 8 children. Cassandra, two years her elder, was her only sister and best friend; they both died unmarried. Much of what is known about Jane is through her letters to Cassandra when they lived apart.
The 2 brothers born either side of Jane both joined the Navy and did well. Not much is known of the 2nd eldest brother, George, though he lived to his 70s. The eldest was 10 years older than Jane and was a member of the clergy, as was her father and the 4th son, Henry, after an unsuccessful stint in banking. Henry was the brother Jane was closest to and was responsible for getting her work published. The third son, Edward, had the unusual fortune to be adopted by a very wealthy family who lacked an heir and eventually changed his surname from Austen to Knight.
Jane’s parents were married in Bath; we later learned this was at St Swithin’s when we took a booklet guided walk the next day. Mr. Austen died very suddenly in 1885 after the family had moved to Bath from someplace I didn’t write down; he is buried in the graveyard across the main road from St. Swithin’s.
The lecture included a list of houses at which the Austen’s lived before and after Mr. A’s death, some of which no longer stand, some are private homes and one is a dentist’s office. We never did hunt those addresses as I thought we might. Having been made poorer by the father’s death, the family moved to less and less prestigious houses, though never into truly awful conditions. It would seem that either living amongst the Bath society or having slid down the social scale a bit caused Jane to dislike Bath and the rich, showy people she encountered. They became the target for her satire.
It was in a cottage supplied rent-free by her wealthy brother, Edward Knight, that Jane spent her last years, having found herself in reduced circumstances. Edward’s estate was at Chawton, near Alton, in the South of England. Jane died in 1817 at the age of 41, from Addison’s Disease, something to do with the adrenal glands according to the lecturer. She is buried at Winchester Cathedral near there, next to her brother, Henry.
Jane was always very private about her writing and never saw her name in print. She requested that the door hinges of her bedroom not be oiled so that she would hear anyone come in and could hide the small (about paperback book sized) pages which she covered in very small writing, possibly because paper was expensive in those days. It was only through her brother Henry’s insistence that the novels were ever submitted to a publisher and apparently there were rejections!
In 1811, Sense and Sensibility was published as having been written ‘By a Lady’. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, ‘By the Author of Sense & Sensibility’. The Prince Regent was a fan and requested a dedication in her books to him. That she did not admire the man and did so grudgingly is evident in her dedication:
To
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE PRINCE REGENT,
This work is,
most respectfully
dedicated
By his Royal Highness's
dutiful
and obedient
humble servant,
The Author.
Her work is no longer under copyright, which was in any case sold by her family long ago. There was a film of an older woman, a distant cousin descended from one of Jane’s brothers, who lives in Lyme Regis, telling about how that place was one of Jane’s favourite vacation spots. The lack of copyright, the lecturer pointed out, may account for part of the work’s popularity with movie makers, the most recent film being ‘Becoming Jane’ with Ann Hathaway, which I think I may have to track down.
There is an incredible amount of information about Jane Austen on the internet, so if she is one of your passions, you're very lucky!
From the time I started reading 'historical novels', I knew about Bath. Virtually any work of fiction involving the middle or upper classes, set in Georgian England had them going there at some point. I pictured horse drawn carriages filling the streets, ladies in long gowns and men in stockings and braid-covered jackets parading up and down the cobbled pavements, meeting up in tea rooms or at balls. I always thought of Bath's buildings and social life, however, the starting point for all this wasn't in the 18th century, but very much earlier. The most distinguishing feature of Bath -- formerly known as Aquae Sulis -- is not its architecture but its hot spring. Seeing this was at the top of Bill's list and so we went there after leaving the Fashion Museum.
The Roman baths date back to 76 A.D. and archaeological findings indicate that around the hot spring was not just a series of rooms in which one bathed, sweated or got a massage, but also a temple and a market. It was a major social meeting place even back then.
Unfortunately we arrived just after a whole load of school children, making it a bit noisy and crowded. However, there were individual handsets like mobile phones. You dialed the numbers shown on the display, and a nicely audible recording provided information. For some of the displays, Bill Bryson had added his own comments; he seems to pop up often here. I was interested to note that he has rather an English accent, actually, and like me he says ‘quite’ a lot, though I could still detect a bit of Iowa in some of his words. He wasn't as funny as I hoped he might be, though.
There is a head of the Roman goddess Minerva on display and it’s in remarkably good condition. It was found accidentally during some modern construction work. These were apparently ‘her’ baths in Roman times. Bryson noted that she’s not very pretty or
approachable, in fact he didn’t think any of the Roman sculptures of women’s faces were very attractive. I have sometimes taken some comfort from some of the Roman women’s figures, however.
In early Roman times, men and women bathed together nude and got up to all sorts, apparently. Bryson said he couldn’t reconcile that activity within a spiritual setting, which the baths were. I think he’s letting his Christian background colour his perceptions. We’re talking pagan gods here. That said, even the Romans eventually outlawed communal bathing and eventually created stairs on two sides of a pool to provide separate ends for each gender.
As part of the temple there was a sacrificial altar, next to which was an augerer’s stone. Apparently the entrails of the slain animal were spread on this stone to be examined for information; the augerer then made predictions for the person who had offered the animal. I was reminded of my Dad’s fascination with Latin as the source of many English words; in fact I still have his book, Origins, about the etymology of words.
Bryson was quite taken with some of the curses, inscribed on pewter, quite of few of which have been found at the site of the temple. Apparently one's prayers to the gods and goddesses weren't so much about asking good things for oneself as wishing bad things on others, particularly on thieves who stole one's property. Bryson noted how personal were some of these curses and for what would seem today relatively minor losses:
Docemedis has lost 2 gloves. He asks that the person who has stolen them should lose his minds and his eyes in the temple where she [Minerva, presumably] appoints.
Though much of the site was rather ugly, a couple of the pools were really beautiful,
and others were quite interesting. Like in the fashion museum, one could see layer upon layer of history. The level of the water shown was as in Roman times.
The brown marks on the wall show the level during later eras, when there was the King and Queen’s Pools, also frequented by the aristocracy. Rings on the wall were placed by grateful, healed persons. Of course the hot baths were prescribed by doctors for various ailments, via immersion and ingestion. Apparently the water temperature was the most comfortable at the edges and so the rings were useful to help one avoid the hotter centre. Above this pool are the windows of the famous Pump Room.
Along with a few staff dressed in Roman drapery, there was steam rising off the green water of this large pool and it was really
beautiful. Particularly when one could see the spires of the elegant Bath Abbey above the enclosure.
They are all there next to one another, the baths, the abbey
and the restaurant.
Like the top of the Newcastle United Football club’s stadium in Newcastle (the local place of worship), the Abbey was to be visible from any number of places we walked. One was also aware of seeing the tree line behind the houses, as Bath sits in a valley at the bottom of which is the River Avon, which Bill said was River River, Avon being a Welsh word for river.
The first night we’d gone to an Indian restaurant and so I was hoping for something a bit less spicy the next evening. We ended up having burgers and kebabs at a quaint place called the Walrus and Carpenter, listening to Carly Simon’s Tapestry album and then something Bill later identified as Joy Division. It was a funny place with very small rooms on several levels. Great music, though.
On our first morning in Bath we set out to find the tourist area. I’m aware that one is supposed to be a ‘traveller’ not a ‘tourist’ these days; though ‘traveller’ here in Britain means Gypsy community in wagons with horses, no less, and has bad connotations throughout Europe, I gather. Be that as it may, we had 4 nights and 3 days to spend, so tourists we were.
We initially missed the tourist area by a wide mark due to avoiding icy paths, using a limited map and Bill’s rule about not asking directions. I did point out that a lot of people seemed to be going a particular way, but Bill said they were just going to Homebase. Our excursion took us up a steep hillside and back down, through many a street full of elegant, prosperous looking stone houses. The next morning, armed with another map, we went past Homebase like everyone else and got to the city centre in 10 minutes instead of an hour or so. Never mind, walking is good exercise.
The first place we went in was the Fashion Museum (formerly the Museum of Costume), which was in the Old Assembly Rooms. these will have been the social gathering place for certain people in Georgian times. I count myself very fortunate that Bill doesn’t mind looking at this sort of stuff. In fact, I think he has quite a good eye and if he said he liked something on display, I usually found it worth my while to have a second look. There were a reasonable number of men’s outfits on display and he had a good laugh at some of the stuff he wore in ‘his day’ – 60s/70s, I think. You'll no doubt recognise this dress:
Photographs without flash were permitted, but because of the glass cases many didn’t turn out well. After the relatively modern clothes from my life time (that's modern, OK?), the more historical displays began with some exquisitely feminine underclothing, camisoles and chemises and the like, from the turn of the last century.
Then there was a wall of gloves, the oldest of which were 400 years old, about the time Shakespeare was alive. The rich embroidery on the part around the wrist was tiny and detailed, small works of art, really. Turns out that ‘gauntlet’ can refer either to that wide cuff alone or to a whole glove, so one doesn’t have to deconstruct one’s glove to throw just part down. Though peoples’ fingers were no longer than they are today, the fingers of these gloves were very long. This was, like the practice of growing disgustingly long finger nails or wearing stupidly high heels, to demonstrate that the wearer did no manual work.
There was a room of dresses going back a couple of hundred years, placed along side of artifacts from the same period. I wasn’t that interested in the long full gowns with the odd silhouettes, but it was interesting to learn that the shape and weight of drinking glasses as we know them today was established during Elizabethan times. Before then, much heavier glasses were used; however, the levy of a tax on glass by weight changed the design to that of much like the present day.
Another thing I learned was about the Regency period, when empire waist dresses were fashionable and Jane Austen was writing. It ties in slightly with American history in that it is to do with the reign of King George III, during which the American Revolution took place. It is called the Regency period because George III was finally declared mad in 1811 and his son, George IV (what else?) ruled as regent until his father's death in 1820.
Though the Regency dresses had lots of interesting design details I was really interested in the dresses from the 20s and 30s. In fact, I liked looking at anything that had vertical lines and upper body interest.
This black lace evening dress with ribbon decoration from 1925 was my one of my two favourites. In trying to make out the name of the designer (Boue Soeurs, Paris) from my blurred photo, I discovered yet another museum I can see I'll be spending online time at. Just in case you are wondering, the dramatic gold dress is by Bruce Oldfield. We saw one of his exhibits years ago at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. I was amazed to learn that he was a Barnado's baby.
My other favourite was this knit outfit that appears to include a top a skirt, and some sort of cape; though it might have been a camisole and a long-sleeved garment, it was really hard to tell. I loved the detail at the shoulder and neckline. Unfortunately I was on overload by then and didn't get the name of the designer.
The only had two Vionnet dresses on display. They were lovely, but were some of her later work with a different silhouette than I've seen in the past. I think the Vionnet dresses shown in this Threads magazine article are far more interesting.
In addition to the clothing displays, the building itself was magnificent. The grand rooms were stock full of chandeliers (some of which were being cleaned) and large fireplaces.
We finished our visit with tea and a bun from the museum café, an impressive room in itself. More specifically, Bill selected a Bath bun and I followed suit. It was about the size of a hamburger bun, with a dimple in the centre, but the bread was slightly sweet. It was topped with raisins and a sprinkling of ‘rock’ sugar, some of which gathered in the dimple. I bit into a lump of solid sugar and I’m sure I made the face most people would if they’d bitten into a lemon. I am not a fan of sugar and therefore cannot recommend a Bath bun.
However, I would definitely recommend Bath's Fashion Museum!
