The Roman Baths at Bath – 2,000 years of history

Roman Bath, Bath

When we approached the entrance of The Roman Baths we thought there was an enormous queue to get into it, but as we got closer we realised that the queue was for something else, so we got in straight away. As I mentioned before it’s expensive, but the ticket price included the use of an audio guide which was informative.  As we had travelled all the way from Scotland we decided that we couldn’t NOT go in.

Below is a photo of Bath Abbey which we didn’t go into, we had been in several churches and cathedrals within a few days so we gave this one a miss, however you do get a good view of it from within the Roman baths, exactly from where I took the photo above.

Bath Abbey , Bath

The photo below is of the hot springs bath, you can see the water bubbling, it’s naturally hot and that amazed the Romans, they decided it must be a sacred place which is why they built the whole complex there. In Georgian times the water level was higher, right up to where you can see the orange sort of tide mark. People used to sit on the stone blocks within the arches with their heads just out of the water. This was not for the faint hearted as the water was not at all clean after so many people using them, many of them with skin problems. It must have caused more problems than it ever cured!

hot bath Bubbling Waters , Roman Bath

It was crazily busy in the baths, especially in the interior parts. There’s a lot more to see than I had imagined. Below is a gilt bronze  head of the godess Sulis Minerva which was discovered during excavations. She’s an amalgamation of the Celtic godess Sulis and Roman godess Minerva. The Romans liked to include parts of the local religions wherever they settled.

Minerva, Roman Baths, Bath

They’ve discovered lots of things which must have been lost in the baths over the centuries, including this lovely Celtic style brooch. Whoever lost it must have been really annoyed! You can read more about the history of the place here.

Celtic Brooch, Bath, Roman Baths

In places you can look down to what was the foundations of the baths.

Roman Bath foundation stones, Bath

Below is a big plunge pool with just a small amount of water in it but you can imagine people sitting around on the stone steps having a gossip, or maybe not, this was the Frigidarium, the cold pool.

Roman Bath Pool, Bath

There were various altars around the place and below is a reconstruction of one with just the corners showing the original Roman pieces. I imagine that they thought it was a good idea to be nice and clean if they were going to be praying to Minerva or anyone else.

Roman Stones  + Pediment, Bath

Below is the remains of a horse sculpture.

Horse Sculpture , Roman Baths, Bath

And there are more figures of horses in what remains of the mosaic below.

Roman Mosaic, Bath

We spent almost two hours there and by that time we were definitely ready for lunch before going on to the next places of interest in Bath. Although the entry price seemed steep it was worth it. The model below shows what the buildings would have looked like in their heyday. The baths were covered with arched roofs as you can see, it would have made it a lot cosier than being open to the elements as they are today. There were areas for massage and general pampering, all by slaves of course. For some reason the videos and photographs of pampering were all of scantily clad women!!

Roman Bath model, Bath

Southern UK road trip – Roman Baths, Bath

I’ve been away in England for over a week. We drove down as far as Glastonbury which we hadn’t planned to do but as ever when we see places on road signs we are tempted to visit them, at one point we were also just a few miles from Avebury so we couldn’t resist.

Before that though we visited Buxton, Bakewell, Bradford-on-Avon, Bath, Frome, Stow-on-the Wold, Devises, Bathford, Midsomer Norton, as well as Glastonbury, then on the way back up north we visited Avebury, Alcester, Wakefield, Sunderland and Tynemouth. By then we were mighty glad to get home and I immediately came down with a bad cold, I’m still sneezing my head off, but at least it isn’t Covid.

We packed so much into every day that I didn’t even manage to get one book finished while we were away, I was just too tired to read at night. As I bought a lot of books in various bookshops and charity shops my book piles have expanded more than somewhat! I’ll blog about them soon. Meanwhile, below is a couple of photos I took of the Roman Baths at Bath. It’s quite expensive to get in but we spent about two hours there, it was really busy so the price doesn’t put people off. It cost £45 for us both with £1 off each ticket because we’re old! It was worth it though and we’ll never be going down that way again. Bath is a strange combination of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It has the shops of Glasgow but the Georgian buildings of Edinburgh. I almost didn’t bother going to visit Bath because it said recently on TV that Edinburgh has the hughest number of Georgian buildings of any place in Europe, but we just take them for granted and don’t make a fuss of them as they do in Bath.

Bath, The Roman Baths

The Roman Baths, Bath