Bathing In Beauty - The Roman Baths, Bath, Somerset

In the late 19th century, the eponymous hot baths of this city were recast in their modern form. Clive Aslet describes this fascinating transformation

- Clive Aslet

IN 1871, the city architect of Bath, Maj Charles Edward Davis, was worried about a leak from the King’s Bath. next to the Pump Room, this was the largest of the four public baths in the city and visitors had been soaking themselves in its hot, malodorous waters since the early Middle Ages. With semicircular recesses in which they could rest and overlooked by a statue of Bath’s mythical founder, King Bladud, it formed part of a magnificently eclectic architectural ensemble; a drawing of 1675 shows a fanciful pavilion in the centre and a strapwork balcony on which spectators could lean to survey the men and women below— bathing was then mixed and naked.

Victorian Bath was more demure, but failing. Although it continued to advertise the curative properties of its waters—good for rheumatism, gout, palsy and general debility —the Georgian heyday was long over. Seaside resorts had captured the summer market and Bath’s winter season was eclipsed by that of newcomers, such as Harrogate. The escape of water from the King’s Bath, lowering its level, symbolised a wider decline.

To investigate the leak, Davis used powerful pumps to remove a mixture of mud, Roman tiles and old building materials to a depth of 20ft. This revealed the bottom of a Roman bath, lined with lead. Work had to stop when the owner of the 18th-century Duke of Kingston’s Bath nearby objected to the loss of water, but Davis returned to the task later in the decade, when the Bath Corporation obtained the rights to the water.

A builder was employed to tunnel along an ancient drain, 6ft below ground. Partially collapsed, the drain was little more than a yard in height; there was no light and steam from the hot spring got ever more intense as the tunnellers worked their way along it. Eventually, they found that they were progressing in parallel to a large Roman wall.