Bath — Circus and Crescent

The neoclassical beauty that makes Bath one of Britain's most beautiful cities is largely due to two architects: John Wood, the Elder, and John Wood, the Younger. The elder Wood was born in a suburb of Bath in 1704. He set out to create a "new Rome," a planned and unified city designed with neoclassical architecture. Many of the large-scale  architectural features of the city — parks, squares, parades, hospitals, and so on — were planned and/or designed by Wood, the elder.

His masterpiece is the Circus, an inward-facing circle of townhouses inspired by the Coliseum in Rome. Decorated with Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian capitals on the pillars, the main door of each house was made large enough to allow the owners' sedan chairs to be carried straight inside without having to pause outside.

Aerial view of the Circus in Bath. The Crescent is one block away following the road leading off to the upper right.

Quiet morning on the Circus in Bath.

As you can see in Bath's Fashion Museum, the ladies needed extra wide sidewalks to accommodate their dresses.

Between the ground and first floor there's a frieze of pictorial emblems. These include nautical symbols, serpents, symbols of science, and Freemasonry images.

The frieze above the ground floor includes 525 images.

There are decorations above the second floor, as well:

Frowning visages look askance at passersby.

Besides the floors above ground, the townhouses also enjoy sunken gardens in front, some more deep than others:

I suspect that the owners of this townhouse have built a room underneath their garden.

This garden is at least twice as deep as the garden pictured above.

For those of you counting at home, there are at least five floors to these houses — one below ground, three main floors, and a servants' attic above.

Those little circular windows at the top were for the servants.

Construction of the Circus began in 1754, the same year John Wood, the Elder, died. It was completed by his son, John Wood, the Younger, in 1768. Trained by his father as an architect, the younger Wood spent his life expanding upon his father's vision, connecting some of his father's isolated sites with wide neoclassical boulevards, and helping to create an entire section of the city in the neoclassical (known in England as "Georgian") style.

For example, he built the grand Assembly Rooms which served as public gathering spaces for the aristocracy to play games, hold concerts and dances, and avoid grubbier public houses (i.e., pubs) where they might have to mingle with the lower classes. The rooms are generally symmetrical and feature high windows to provide privacy for those within.

The Germans bombed these rooms during World War II so everything is a reconstruction except for the chandeliers, which are original.

Octagonal room. Chairs apparently set out for an epidemic of wallflowers.

The younger Wood's greatest achievement is the Crescent, a block away from the Circus. At the time it was built, it was on the edge of town and faced out into the countryside. Started in 1767 and finished in 1774, the Crescent contains 30 houses — or, at least, 30 house facades, but some of the houses have been combined on the interior. When building the Crescent, the buyers of the homes purchased a section of the front and then built their house behind the facade, which means the Crescent is uniformly sweeping in front but has a varied and irregular back.

Aerial view of the Crescent in Bath. Note the irregular backs of the homes, contrasting with the uniform front.

The facade of the Crescent is simpler than the Circus, with only Ionic columns and no friezes or other statuary. It is widely considered to be one of the best examples of Georgian architecture and has been imitated in various cities across England.

Several of the houses were undergoing rehab when we visited.

Can you spot Kate and Jackson in this photo? (Good luck.)

At the center of the Crescent, behind the red construction (and the green shrubbery somehow allowed to overwhelm the facade), is the Royal Crescent Hotel. If you're pretty and smile nicely like me {Ed.'s note: It assuredly was not for Brian, but rather for Kate.}, they'll let you walk through and peek into the back of the crescent and perhaps stop for some tea.

Inside the Royal Crescent Hotel.

A view of the garden/restaurant seating. The rear of the Royal Crescent Hotel is in the background.

Behind the hotel, one of the many tourist-site cats we encountered in southwest England.

Unlike the inward-facing Circus and other sites designed by Wood, the Elder, the younger Wood designed the Crescent to be open and outward-facing. An expansive lawn fades downhill from the Crescent and is now much used as a spot for picnics or pickup football matches.

The upper part of the lawn is reserved for the homeowners on the Crescent. They're not that welcoming to the hoi polloi.

Dividing the upper and lower lawns is a "ha-ha" wall. From the lower side of the lawn, the ground slopes down into a ditch, with a stone retaining wall holding up the upper lawn. The wall is invisible from the Crescent, leaving an illusion of an uninterrupted lawn. Even from the lower lawn the wall is hard to see until you get fairly close. In times past, the ditch was steeper and the wall was higher. It had good use for when sheep and other livestock might graze on the lower lawn, but were prevented by the wall from munching on the upper lawn and getting too close to the houses. Not coincidentally, the wall kept peasants and other lesser folk from visiting.

Jackson giggled a "ha-ha" at the wall, trying to climb it and throwing a ball onto the forbidden land.

We visited the Crescent at least three times during our weekend stay in Bath. It was only a couple of blocks from our bed and breakfast, and the jovial open space was great for burning off toddler energy. Jackson even helped organize the grass clippings.

I crush them! Kaboom!

More must be added to this magnificent pile.

Next post will move us into Bath's modern era.

Bath — Aquae Sulis

At the end of August we headed to southwestern England. The impetus for our trip was to get Kate's veterinary license in the U.K., as mentioned here. Her appointment was on a Tuesday, in London. Since we've previously visited London, we decided to take a long weekend and explore a part of England where we've never been.

On the Friday afternoon we flew from Glasgow to Bristol. We didn't spend any time in Bristol, just picked up a little rental car and drove to Bath on delightfully narrow country roads. Sometimes, the road was not wide enough for two cars to pass, but no one seemed to mind, even though we were often walled in by giant hedges. Fairly similar to Scotland, really.

No escape! This photo was taken from the passenger's side, so the view on the driver's side is even more unsettling.

Bath is a tourist's dream. Its attractions span the ages: ancient Roman, medieval, Enlightenment (i.e., Georgian), Victorian, and modern. Bed and breakfasts abound. Great restaurants. Beautiful parks. A river perfect for boating. All the sites are compact and walkable; indeed, you'd be foolish to drive and miss the experience of wandering in the town. Flowers and charm and beauty seem to ooze out everywhere.

So, of course, I have too many pictures. Way too many pictures.

Medieval cathedral, wide Georgian avenues, flowers, creamy limestone — a snapshot of Bath.

Consequently, I'm dividing up an ungodly long unwieldy blog post into a handful of comparatively shorter posts.

This post will focus on the Roman spa that gives Bath its name. As a town established by the Romans in the AD 60s, Aquae Sulis ("waters of Sulis") took advantage of a natural hot spring. Although originally the Romans just built a temple over what had previously been a shrine to the native Briton god Sulis (whom the Romans associated with Minerva), by 200 AD they had built a spa complex of a hot bath, warm bath, and cold bath (calidarium, tepidarium, frigidarium). After the Empire collapsed in the fifth century, the spa fell into disuse and silted up.

Eventually, the local inhabitants had no idea the Roman bath was nearby and below them. Though there were still places to bathe in the hot springs, the spa was eventually filled by silt and then forgotten. The town carried on in importance due to its church, and an English king was crowned in Bath in the 970s. But gradually the town declined until only a few thousand inhabitants remained in the sixteenth century. Late in the sixteenth century, the baths were improved and Elizabeth I issued a royal charter to make the town into a city.

In the 1700s the city exploded in popularity because of the supposed restorative powers of its thermal waters. The city's economic boom resulted in a gorgeous neoclassical city of wide avenues, tall pillars, large doors and windows, and sweeping vistas. This "Georgian" style — so named in England for successive kings named "George" who were ruling at the time, but known to the rest of the world as neoclassical style — now dominates the heart of the city.

It wasn't until the 1880s that the Roman baths were rediscovered, though some of the surrounding Roman ruins had been found many centuries earlier. The spa was excavated and then, in classic Victorian fashion, "enhanced" by adding a fake Roman promenade above to look down into the baths. The spa waters are now 18 feet below the modern ground level.

We visited the baths in the evening, when they are lit by gas lamps. We thus enjoyed much smaller crowds and atmospheric lighting. Here is the view you get when you start your visit:

Looking down into the Roman spa at Bath, from the Victorian era balcony.

Kate and Jackson peer down between two faux-Roman statutes.

Your visit to the baths is enhanced by a good museum and extensive audioguide. You get a lot of detailed information regarding topics such as the usage of the rooms, models of the complex, coins tossed for luck into the pools, surviving pediments, and even curse tablets (e.g., patrons cursing people who stole their clothes while they were in the baths). Oftentimes, historical reenactors wander the site to try to give a flavor of Roman life.

There's a fair bit of scholarly debate about whether the fellow on this pediment is Neptune, or a Gorgon (but those were usually female), or something else. Are those possibly snakes in his hair?

Display of Roman coins found in the spring, dated from 50 to 176 AD. Coin portraits continue in modern times, too.

Who knew the Romans sported beehive hairstyles?

The thermal waters bubbling up from underground rise at a supposedly uniform temperature of 114.8 Fahrenheit. It certainly has a fair amount of iron:

Looks like your ideal bathing water, right?

Some parts of the baths have almost vanished, while other parts are remarkably well preserved:

These little pillars supported the floor. Hot air could flow amidst the pillars and heated the floor and room above.

This room is walled off from foot traffic.

I think the best time to experience the baths is at night. It might even be romantic. Except for the other tourists. And the toddler.

Early or late hours = fewer tourists.

Mood lighting in the evenings.

Wishing well bath: we donated more than our fair share of coins because tossing them in was Jackson's favorite part of the evening.

You can also drink as much of the water as you can choke down want. As a Dickens character opined in The Pickwick Papers, "I thought they'd a very strong flavor o' warm flat irons." Jackson, of course, drank multiple cups.

"Please, sir, I want some more."

These ruins are one of the best-presented Roman sites I have come across, including Italy. Between extensive displays and a thorough audioguide, visitors can spend hours delving deeply into as much history as they would like. Meanwhile, those who want a quicker visit can stroll through the guided path and still pick up key points merely by glancing at exhibits without stopping. It's very user-directed, catering to different tastes.

In the next post, we'll jump ahead more than a thousand years to take a look at the medieval church.