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CITY | HISTORY
From medieval city to resort
Bath’s famous Assembly Rooms in Bennett Street are celebrating their 250th anniversary this year. Emma Clegg looks back at the period before they were built and tracks the city’s swift transformation into a destination spa resort
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ath has always drawn the crowds, its allure linked to the mineral-rich hot spa waters, and this goes right back to the Celtic Britons who used it as a sacred shrine. However the city has had two grand periods of note, firstly at the time of the great Roman town of Aquae Sulis, founded in the first century AD, which was built and orientated around its spa, which included a temple and bathing complex. We have few clues about what ailments were treated there, but it’s possible that the mineral-rich mud from the springs was used to treat eye conditions and skin complaints. The city’s second heyday in the Georgian era saw the arrival of visitors from smart society with financial resources seeking the waters for health cures. This saw the civilisation and dramatic architectural development of the city, which still make it distinctive today. People came to Bath in the 17th century to visit the Cross Bath and the Kings Bath, the latter built above the Roman reservoir, but the city struggled to cope with the numbers, and the baths themselves were often crowded. From 1688 Queen Anne (then Princess Anne) visited the city regularly to take the thermal waters for minor health complaints. She visited Bath again in 1702 and 1703 as Queen, seeking relief from her gout. Bath at this time was little more than a medieval walled city: timber-framed properties clustered around the abbey, the streets were unpaved, not lit at night, and muggings were common, so there was not the infrastructure or resources to support high numbers of visitors. In the words of architect John Wood the Elder, describing his home town, “Soil of all sorts, and even carrion, were cast and laid in the streets, and the pigs turned out by day to feed and rout among it.” So when news of the Queen’s visits and the healing effects of the waters spread, resulting in large numbers of new visitors and pleasure seekers, Bath realised that in order to keep its visitors it had to change. It was time to create a city to house, feed and entertain them. Public Bathing at Bath, or Stewing Alive, engraving by Isaac Robert Cruikshank, 1825
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The arrival of Beau Nash This course of action hailed the beginning of Beau Nash’s time in the city and a sustained period of structural development. When professional gambler and social magnet Nash visited Bath in the early years of the century shortly after Queen Anne’s visits he would have seen bathers soaking in the mineral waters from the early morning, for the rest of the day free to relax, walk in the parks or visit taverns and coffee houses. He would have noted this carefully. When Nash moved to Bath in 1704, he and his associates were determined to remodel the city – with all its crowd-drawing potential – into a fashionable town with attractions beyond the use of the waters. Initially Nash was the aide-de-camp to the Master of Ceremonies Captain Webster, whose role was to manage the social gatherings in the city. When Webster was killed in a sword duel, caused by an argument over a card game, Nash was his natural successor as Master of Ceremonies. The first Pump Room was built in 1704–6, initiated by Nash and designed by John Harvey, located on the site of the current Pump Rooms. This quickly became the centre of social activity, headed by Nash, a flamboyant and enterprising character who lived for socialising and gambling. While the basement of the Pump Rooms was in the early years used as a changing area for people going swimming in the waters, before too long – driven by how dirty the water often became – drinking water from the Pump Room itself became the preferred and more accessible way of taking the water. In this way the Pump Room was effectively the first (unchristened) assembly room. The Lower Assembly Rooms To cater for the growing number of visitors to the city, two other sets of rooms were built. The first was Harrison’s Rooms in 1709, located on the east side of Terrace Walk and overlooking Harrison’s Walks – a formal garden bordering the river known as St James Triangle –
