We woke up after a solid eleven hours of sleep and were feeling great! We got ready and had a quick breakfast at our B&B.
Roman Baths
Our first stop of the day was to the Roman Baths. This place has a lot of fascinating history that spans hundreds and hundreds of years, between the Romans and later with the Victorians. We were able to do an audio guide for about 45 minutes and then we met up to do a guided tour for about an hour. The guided tour was good and had some interesting stories, but I think if we were doing it again, we would rather have spent our time just walking around ourselves with the audio guide and taking in the museum and the surroundings at our own pace.
We began exploring the terrace which was completed in 1897. It is surrounded by statues of Roman governors who were over Britannia as well as Roman emperors with connections to Britain, such as Julius Caesar and Constantine the Great. There used to be a high Roman roof covering the bath that reached 65 feet above.
Then we entered the museum. We explored the spring which rises at a rate of 1,170,000 liters each day at 114 degrees. Beneath the bath is a reservoir that was built by Roman engineers. There are also two other smaller hot springs nearby. The Spring was a sacred place for local people before the Romans came. When the Romans invaded in 43 AD, they built a new bath house and a temple dedicated to a new goddess named Sulis Minerva. People came to visit the Baths, Spring, and Temple from all over the Roman world to bathe, make an offering, and worship.
Something we thought was interesting were the curses. Archeologists have found curses written to the Goddess Sulis Minerva on lead or pewter that were then thrown into the sacred spring. Many of the curses were about theft.
There were other objects also thrown in the spring, like offerings to the Goddess Sulis Minerva, such as temple plates, personal belongings, jewelry, and coins.
Many skilled craftspeople were needed to build the baths, and the labor would have been done by enslaved people. There are several different rooms that were used at the baths, with varying temperatures.
The water in the main pool does not look like anything I would like to take a swim in. The water is around 5 feet deep. We later took a drink out of the spring, and it wasn’t great. For those that know Soda Springs, Idaho, it tastes just like Hooper water.
No. 1 Royal Crescent
We then walked back up to the Royal Crescent and took a tour of No. 1. On the way, we walked up the Gravel Walk (because I loved it so much the other day). Royal Crescent No. 1 is a Georgian home that is stunning and it felt like stepping back in time. It was built between 1767 – 1772 and remains decorated how it would have been for the wealthy of the time, living there during the “social season”. We walked room by room and they had audio of actors speaking for the family that lived here during the 1780s and the conversations that would have happened in each room. This gave a great perspective on life back in the day and the attitudes that were prevalent. I thought it was very well done.
The first room was the dining room which was formal and used for entertaining guests. It was a symbol of status with portraits on the wall that would highlight the family’s position in society. During this time, fashionable households would eat dinner at five or six o’clock. The English dined in a style where various dishes were placed on the table at once and diners helped themselves to whatever was closest. Servants then cleared plates but did not serve. Dessert was the high point of an elaborate Georgian dinner, and the host would show off their wealth by serving expensive sugary sweetmeats, syllabubs, and creams.
The Parlor was used as a family room for everyday activities. It was also a room where visitors could be greeted and entertained. Residents could watch the comings and goings along the Royal Crescent where many people promenaded between 12 and 2.
The Gentleman’s Retreat or study was where the gentlemen of the household would go to study science, history, literature, and the natural world. The aristocracy of the time was obsessed with gaining knowledge through collecting during this Age of Enlightenment. This was also a way for gentlemen to display their wealth and show they were cultured and learned. This was peak time for British colonization and the cultures and people of other countries provided objects for many of these collections.
The Lady’s Bedroom or bedchamber was her sanctuary. This is where she slept, and with the help of her maid, would dress, style her hair, and apply makeup. A very fashionable lady would even receive visitors in her bedroom to keep her company and gossip while dressing.
The Withdrawing Room was used for entertaining guests and was the most elegant room in the house. The ladies would take tea here after “withdrawing” from dinner and leave the men in the Dining Room. The men would later join the ladies upstairs and play cards or listen to music played on the harpsichord. Georgian England was passionate about their tea. It was an expensive commodity, and the lady of the house would be in control of the key to the wooden tea caddy. She would then prepare and serve the drink to visitors herself.
The Gentleman’s Bedroom is far less elaborate than the Lady’s Bedroom. Married couples in the Georgian upper class usually kept separate bedrooms. To make this space masculine, engravings and images of Bath were used to decorate the walls.
The Kitchen of a townhome like this was usually cramped, hot, and poorly lit. There were four separate alcoves which allowed for different cooking methods. The cast iron baking oven was used for bread, cakes, and Bath Buns. The stewing stove was for soups and sauces. Large joints were roasted on the coal fire range, which also had removable trivets for kettles. The oval copper boiler was used for boiling meat or puddings. Traditionally, wealthy households preferred male cooks, ideally French, since they were regarded as the most skilled. But smaller households employed women because their wages were lower.
The Scullery was a multi-functional area. It was where household cleaning and laundry were done. This particular house also had its own internal well under the floor in the scullery which was quite a luxury. Heavy laundry was done by washer women who came in every few weeks. Wash days were traditionally on Mondays, but could last several days.
The Housekeeper’s Room was for the more mature woman housekeeper who played a valuable role as a skilled professional in the household. She had status as the most important female servant, so she had her own room for comfort and privacy. Her tasks included organizing the household, paying bills, and planning menus. There was a book which offered instructions and guidance on running a house. The furnishings in this room were plain and less fashionable than upstairs, of course, but they still provided a sense of gentility. The housekeeper would also have kept the China closets, linen cupboards, and storage for dried goods, spices, soap and candles, all under lock and key.
The Servants’ Hall was only found in the grandest of houses. It was a room where staff gathered to eat together. A townhouse did not need as many servants as a country house, so usually only five or six servants would run a townhome performing multiple responsibilities.
Guildhall Market
Afterwards, we walked back through the Circus – because we loved it – and down to Guildhall Market. This has a farmer’s market feel to it with various vendors inside selling candy, cheese, leather goods, and even barber shops. We ate lunch at the Market Café that is there. Mark had the sausage and egg sandwich, and I had two fried eggs on two pieces of toast. Delicious!
The weather on this day was colder and rainier, but what made it tricky was the wind. It made the umbrella unhelpful once again and we just chose to embrace it. A phrase we said throughout the trip was not to get upset about things that were out of our control. The weather is definitely one of those things and we never got upset about it.
Stonehenge
We then met our small tour van to go on our Stonehenge tour. Our tour guide was named Sally and she was delightful. She was from Scotland and made the whole experience wonderful and we would definitely recommend the tour. She picked us up in Bath and drove us for about an hour to Stonehenge and pointed out some interesting history along the way.
Stonehenge was cold and windy, but lovely. It was particularly blustery and rainy when we first got there and so almost everyone stayed in the visitor center, but we braved the storm and we are happy we did. We had a very quiet visit while we were up at the stones and the sun even popped out at the end. They had a great audio guide while at the stones that helped to explain things and it was very fascinating to look at. We even met Gertrude; a great bustard Sally had told us about. We were very glad we came and saw this iconic site.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric temple that was created about 4,500 years ago. It is a masterpiece of engineering, and the stones are arranged to line up with the movements of the sun. The ruins that are left today are all that are left of a much larger complex. First was the construction of a large sacred, circular encloser in about 3,000 BC. Inside was a ring of 56 pits, which probably held upright pillars. Then about 500 years later, enormous sarsen stones were raised in a horseshoe and a circle, with smaller bluestones placed between them. The stones were aligned at midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. About 300 years later, the site continued to evolve. An earthwork avenue was built that led to the entrance and the bluestones were rearranged. Throughout time, some of the stones were removed from the site and many have fallen. Some have been re-erected during restoration projects which started in 1919 and were completed in 1964.
It is such a mysterious ruin. We will most likely never fully understand its purpose but the effort put into this site is incredible. The poet, William Wordsworth wrote in 1794, “Pile of Stone-henge! So proud to hint yet keep thy secrets…”
They do know that Stonehenge was used as a cemetery for cremated remains, which were then placed in Aubrey Holes. They were built by people who lived in small groups, mostly moving with their cattle herds season to season. But they returned regularly to the same places. There are several other Neolithic sites in the area.
They have also recreated the homes that the builders of Stonehenge would have lived in. This was not an ordinary place of settlement, but a place where people gathered to celebrate, conduct rituals, and built this sacred space.
We also really liked the exhibit in the visitor’s center. They had a circular room that you could stand in and the walls surrounding had Stonehenge virtually on them. It showed the sun coming between the rocks and it was beautiful. We learned a lot. This was the highlight of the trip for Mark.
Once we got back to Bath, we walked back up to the Circus and ate at the Circus Restaurant. It was a cozy setting with fancy food. Mark had the flat iron steak with chimichurri, crispy shallots, watercress, and chunky chips. I had the Fiori di Carciofi with wild garlic pasta, artichoke mascarpone, and hazelnut pesto alla trapanese.
We had the nicest walk back to our B&B through the Royal Victoria Park at sunset. It was lovely.
