‘To see all Bath and for All Bath to See’
Author: © Carolyn McDowall 2009
Roman Bath at Bath, England
The city of Bath, in the West Country of England has long been renowned for its medicinal springs.
During Roman times, and indeed up until about the year 400, it was a thriving town named Aquae Sulis.
Throughout the medieval period it was little more than a market town largely dominated by the Church.
It was not until King Henry V111 came to see Bath for himself that the therapeutic value of the waters became, once again, well known and people came to be cured.
By the turn of the eighteenth century Queen Anne, whose health had greatly suffered from countless failed pregnancies was seeking rejuvenation through the medicinal waters at Bath. It would become a centre for fashionable people following the arrival of Richard ‘Beau’ Nash in 1702. Born at Swansea in Wales in 1674 Nash following an unsuccessful career in the army had become a professional gamester. It was in this capacity he came to Bath, hoping for rich pickings. At that time there was a self styled Master of Ceremonies at Bath a Captain Webster – another professional gambler – who arranged dances in the local Guildhall. Nash became his aide-de-camp and when Webster was killed in a duel Nash, quick to realise he had found his metier, took over the role and by 1704 had made Bath a great centre for fashionable society.
Entrance Pump Room, Bath
His first move when he ascended to the ‘throne’ was to ban the fighting of duels, then he hired a good band and found a house to act as Assembly Rooms until something better could be built. In 1706 he rebuilt the Pump Room where Bath’s famous medicinal waters could be taken by those seeking a cure. He also engaged builder Thomas Harrison to complete a set of elegant Assembly Rooms. (John Woods the Younger built the ones that exist today in 1769).
The ‘Beau’ was extremely plain but always dressed in very flashy clothes and he soon became the undisputed King of Bath. He wrote a set of rules for social behaviour that was posted in the pump room- for instance ‘That Gentlemen crowding before Ladies at the Ball, shew ill Manners, and that none do so for the future – except such as respect nobody but themselves’.
Beau Nash - Trendsetter
He forbade duelling, the carrying of swords in town and arranged for the lighting of roads. He raised money to improve communications, presiding personally at Balls and in the process succeeded in attracting the fashionable world to Bath.
The Balls or dances in the Assembly Rooms were extremely formal starting with a minuet for which the Beau would lead out the most important lady present – probably a Duchess – and then he would lead out the most important man to partner her. They would dance watched by the whole company and be followed by less important couples for the next two hours.
At these occasions the Beau banned men from wearing boots. Instead they were encouraged to wear stockings and shoes bringing about a major change in fashion for society at play. Because so many people came to Bath for their health the Balls organised by the Beau began at 6.30 pm and ended sharply at 11 pm. Even a Royal Princess was unable to make Beau Nash change his rules.
Today we would perhaps think it all intolerably slow but the Beau gained a great deal of respect and he reigned supreme at Bath for over twenty years. Those individuals in society who sought to flaunt his rules suffered his disdain and were dismissed out of hand…however he was very generous to those having hard times. He brought about a great ‘levelling of society’ ensuring that while they were at Bath merchants, noblemen and gentle folk all mixed together and learned to respect each other. He arbitrated disputes between neighbours and visitors and made valuable introductions in his self appointed role as benevolent dictator and arbiter of taste.
Prior Park, Bath
Another influential inhabitant of Bath was Ralph Allen. He started life in a very small way in Cornwall but came to the city to work in the Post Office. He uncovered a Jacobite plot and so earned the patronage of the influential General Wade who had been sent to Bath to suppress any uprising.
Allen became Postmaster in 1712 aged only 19, then Mayor in 1742 and Member of Parliament for Bath from 1757 – 1764. He made a huge fortune partly from the stone quarries, which he acquired.
He built a great house, Prior Park, overlooking the town with stone blocks cut with crisp clean edges to suit the newly favoured classical façade that was designed by architect John Wood.
It was Allen who persuaded the architect John Wood to come to Bath and redesign the town on the lines of a Roman city.
Queens Square was built in1736 and linked by Gay Street to the Circus, which was built in 1754. Wood’s son John Wood the Younger built the fabulous Royal Crescent in Bath linking it to the Circus.
Royal Crescent, Bath, England
All these very elegant streets of beautiful classical style buildings were much copied and other architects who worked in Bath included the Scottish genius Robert Adam who designed the charming Pulteney Bridge.
At Prior Park Allen entertained lavishly. Guests included the poet Alexander Pope who designed its garden working with noted landscape gardener Capability Brown.
Bath Abbey, Roman Baths and Pump Room
The painter Thomas Gainsborough came to Bath in search of commissions and became another well-known visitor at Prior Park as were novelists Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding.
The great character Squire Allworthy in Henry Fielding’s rollicking popular tale Tom Jones is a sympathetic portrait of Ralph Allen.
Thanks to Beau Nash, Ralph Allen and John Woods and John Woods the Younger Bath became, and remains today one of the most complete elegant eighteenth century cities left in Europe.
Beau Nash died in 1761 in poverty and obscurity but the Bath he created continued to attract the fashionable world.
In 1766 an anonymous publication appeared called ‘the New Bath Guide’. The very eccentric and fashionable man of wit and style Horace Walpole wrote to a friend: – ‘what pleasure you have to come! There is a new thing published called the New Bath Guide. It stole into the world, and for a fortnight no soul looked into it, concluding its name was its true name. No such thing. It is a set of letters in verses, in all kinds of verses, describing the life of Bath, and, incidentally everything else: but so much wit, so much humour, so much originality never met together before.’ The author was the Rev. Christopher Anstey. Here is a small quote from ‘A Consultation of Physicians’: -
Comforts of the Pump Room, by Thomas Rowlandson
Says I ‘my good doctors, I can’t understand‘ Why the deuce you take so many patients in hand;‘You’ve a great deal of practice, so far as I find,‘But since you’re come hither do pray be so kind,‘To write me down something that’s good for the wind.‘ No doubt ye are all of ye great politicians‘But at present my bowels have need of physicians;‘Consider my case in the light it deserves, ‘And pity the state of my stomach and nerves’
Slightly later cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson, published a set of pictures of life in Bath. Together with the New Bath Guide, which has been republished, they give a graphic idea of life in Bath in the second half of the C18.
By the time Jane Austen and her family came to live in Bath in 1801 it was no longer the exclusive haunt of the aristocracy. With the rise in the population and creation of a moneyed middle class many more visitors came to the city from widely varying backgrounds. The resident population alone had risen from some 3,000 in 1700 to 33,000.
Assembly Room, Bath
Although Jane Austen disliked Bath and thought it bad for her health she, nevertheless, featured it in two of her most charming novels – ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Persuasion’. Most of the places she mentions are still their today in much the same state.
The upper Assembly Rooms, built by John Wood the Younger (1768-71) are where Catherine Morland, the heroine of ‘Northanger Abbey’ sat disconsolately waiting for a partner until the delightful Henry Tilney appears. These rooms were bombed during the Second World War but have been sensitively restored to their original appearance.
Pulteney Bridge, Bath designed by Scottish Architect Robert Adam
One can still walk on the hills where Henry and his sister, Eleanor, instructed Catherine in the delights of looking at landscape.
The Austen family lived in Sydney Place over Pulteney Bridge and next to Laura Place where Anne Elliot’s snobbish cousins, the Dalrymple’s, lived in ‘Persuasion’.
One can take a ‘Jane Austen walk’ to see many of the places connected with her or featured in her novels.
When late in the century doctors began to recommend sea bathing as a ‘cure all’ and when the Prince Regent (later George IV) built his fabulous pavilion by the seaside at Brighton, Bath which was situated inland in the country began to lose its popularity.
During the Victorian era the city sank into a decline thus escaping much of the ‘modernisation’ taking place in other towns. Invalids still frequented it but it more generally became a city of retirement for many people from the armed services on small pensions.
The Circus, Bath
It was not until the Second World War when the Admiralty was evacuated there that the rejuvenation of the city really began. Since the end of World War II much restoration has taken place of, for instance, the Pump Room, the Baths, and the Assembly Rooms.
All the stone buildings from being still ‘black’ with soot in the 70’s now once again glow golden in the setting sun.
Today Bath is as busy as it must have been in the eighteenth century although with more emphasis on enjoyment and tourism and much less on invalidism!
©Carolyn McDowall 2009
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