Saturday 11 July 2015

Walk around Bath

Both of us have previously visited Bath on at least two occasions so we weren’t in the mood to pay to revisit previous attractions.  however there is plenty to see in Bath without having to part with your money.  It’s a very attractive city where the elected officials have obviously gone to a great deal of effort to ensure the Georgian character has been retained. It’s also very much a magnet for tourists.  Actually it became a modern tourist attraction in the 17 century when it became popular as a spa town. 

The remains of the Roman Baths were “discovered” at the beginning of this period although not much of them can actually be seen.  What the tourist sees at the Pump House is a Georgian idea of what a Roman Bathhouse would look like.

Bath became one of “the places” to be seen during the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian periods.  There were numerous halls where the upper classes could meet and mingle.  The buildings were almost exclusively built from local Bath stone.

Some of the noteworthy architecture includes The Circus where a central circular park is surrounded by three segments of apartments.

the circle sml The Royal Crescent is one of the more famous structures.  It’s located high on the northern side of the city and consists of 30 apartments constructed in the shape of a crescent.

royal crescent

I’m rather pleased with the above photo.  Readers might recall I managed to modify the software on our old Samsung phone and the camera functionality was part of this process.

A considerable effort has gone into ensuring all the buildings around the centre of the city have retained this Georgian terraced look.  I chose a street at random to highlight this.

bath street sml

More on Bath and the Sally Lunn’s tomorrow.

1 comment :

Peter Berry said...

Take a look around the backs of those opulent facades and you will see grotty unkempt concrete. Georgian Bath was built for show, and the money was spent on the frontages while the rear of property was intended to remain unseen and as such left rather slapdash. Also Bath demonstrates very well the "window tax" that was introduced historically. The more windows a property had, the more tax you paid, obviously meant as a tax on the wealthy. Consequently you will notice many blocked off window apertures within the Georgian facades.