City of Bath England Photo Tour
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The West Country

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Bath is a city in South West England most famous for its baths fed by three hot springs. It is situated 159 km (99 miles) west of central London and 21 km (13 miles) southeast of Bristol. It is also called Bath Spa.

The city is founded on the only naturally-occurring thermal spa in the United Kingdom. It was first documented as a Roman spa, although tradition suggests that it was founded earlier. The waters from its spring were believed to be a cure for many afflictions. From Elizabethan to Georgian times it was a resort city for the wealthy. As a result of its popularity during the latter period, the city contains many fine examples of Georgian architecture, most notably the Royal Crescent. The city has a population of over 80,000 and is a World Heritage Site.

Situation and transport
Bath is located at approximately 25 kilometers (15 miles) south-east of the larger city and port of Bristol, to which it is linked by the A4 road, and is a similar distance south of the M4 motorway. Its main railway station, Bath Spa, lies on the Great Western Railway, the main line between Bristol and London, as well as the line linking Cardiff with Portsmouth.

Bath is connected to Bristol and the sea by the River Avon, navigable via locks by small boats. The river was connected to the River Thames and London by the Kennet and Avon Canal in 1810 via Bath Locks; this waterway—closed for many years, but restored in the last years of the 20th century—is now popular among users of narrow boats, and was historically an important water route to London.

Culture
During the 18th century, Bath was an extremely fashionable cultural hub, attracting the aristocracy and gentry from all over the country. This gave the city the finance and incentive to undertake large cultural developments. It was during this time that Bath's Theatre Royal was first built, as well as architectural triumphs such as Lansdown Crescent, the Royal Crescent, The Circus and Pulteney Bridge.

Today, Bath has four theatres—Theatre Royal, Ustinov Studio, The Egg and Rondo Theatre—attracting internationally renowned companies and directors, including Peter Hall. The city also has a long standing musical tradition; Bath Abbey is home to the Klais Organ and is the largest concert venue in the city, with about 20 concerts and 26 organ recitals each year. The city holds the Bath International Music Festival and Mozartfest every year. Other festivals include the annual Bath Film Festival, the Bath Fringe Festival and the Bath Beer Festival.

The city is home to the Victoria Art Gallery, Museum of East Asian Art, and The Holburne Museum of Art, as well as the museums The Bath Postal Museum, The Museum of Costume, Sally Lunn's Refreshment House & Museum,The Jane Austen Centre and the Roman Baths.

The city has many churches including Manvers Gospel Hall, located in the city centre.

Bath in the arts
Perhaps the best known resident of Bath was Jane Austen, who lived in the city from 1801 until 1806. However, Jane Austen never liked the city, and wrote to her sister Cassandra "It will be two years tomorrow since we left Bath for Clifton, with what happy feelings of escape." Despite her feelings regarding the city, Bath has honored her name with the Jane Austen Centre and a city walk based on Austen. After leaving the city, Austen wrote two novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (written 1816, published 1818), which are largely set in the city and feature descriptions of taking the waters, social life, and cultural resources such as music recitals.

Charles Dickens' novel Pickwick Papers also features Bath, and satirizes its social life. Pickwick takes the waters and his servant, Sam Weller, comments that the water has "a very strong flavor o' warm flat irons", while the Royal Crescent is the venue for a chase between two of the characters, Dowler and Winkle.
William Friese-Greene began experimenting with celluloid and motion pictures in his studio in Bath in the 1870s, developing some of the earliest movie camera technology there. He is credited at the inventor of cinematography.
Moyra Caldecott's novel The Waters of Sul is set in Roman Bath in 72 AD. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals is also set in Bath.
In 2004, a movie version of Thackeray's Vanity Fair was largely filmed in Bath.
The 1980s band Tears for Fears is from Bath.
The Pop duo Goldfrapp is from Bath.
Roald Dahl's chilling short-story, "The Landlady" also takes place in the city of Bath.
In August 2003 the Three Tenors sang at a special concert to mark the opening of the Thermae Bath Spa, a new hot water spring spa in Bath City Centre; delays to the project meant the spa actually opened three years later on August 7, 2006.

Parks
Parade Gardens in July after a rain shower The city has several public parks, the main one being Royal Victoria Park is a short walk from the centre of the city. It was opened in 1830 and has an area of 150,000 m˛.Several events are held in the park every year, including the International Music Festival (a one-off Three Tenors concert took place in 2003), and it is favored as a take-off site by hot air balloon companies. The park features a botanical garden, a large children's play park, and sports facilities, including ones for crazy golf and lawn tennis. Much of its area is lawn; a notable feature is the way in which a ha-ha segregates it from the Royal Crescent, while giving the impression to a viewer from the Crescent of a greensward uninterrupted across the Park up to Royal Avenue.

Other parks in Bath include: Alexandra Park, which crowns a hill and overlooks the city; Parade Gardens, along the river front near the Abbey in the centre of the city; Sydney Gardens, known as a pleasure-garden in the 18th century; Henrietta Park; Hedgemead Park; and Alice Park. Jane Austen wrote of Sydney Gardens that "It would be pleasant to be near the Sydney Gardens. We could go into the Labyrinth everyday." Alexandra, Alice and Henrietta parks were built into the growing city among the housing developments. A linear park now exists where the old railway line once was.

The Spa
In 2006, with the opening of Thermae Bath Spa, the city has attempted to recapture its historical position as the only town in the United Kingdom offering visitors the opportunity to bathe in naturally heated spring waters.

Bath is served by the Bath Spa railway station, which has regular connections to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, Cardiff, Swansea, Plymouth and Penzance (see Great Western Main Line), and also Westbury, Warminster, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton (see Wessex Main Line). Services are provided by First Great Western. There is a suburban station on the main line, Oldfield Park, which has a limited commuter service to Bristol. The charming Green Park station, once operated by the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, was closed by Beeching in 1965, but the building survives and is used for shopping.

Though Bath does not have an airport, the city is not far from Bristol International Airport, which may be accessed by car and by bus or taxi, and by rail via Bristol Temple Meads or Nailsea & Backwell.

National Express operates coach services from Bath to a number of cities. Internally, Bath has a large number of bus routes run by the First Group, with services to surrounding towns and cities. There are two other companies running open top double decker bus tours around the city.

Architecture
Of Bath's notable buildings, Bath Abbey is one of the most striking and whilst appearing very old, in terms of Britain's many ancient Abbeys and cathedrals, it is comparatively new. Originally a Norman church on earlier foundations, it was rebuilt in the early 16th century and transformed into a gothic fantasy of flying buttresses with crocketed pinnacles decorating a crenelated and pierced parapet. The style of architecture employed is known as late Perpendicular. The choir and transepts have a fine fan vault by Robert and William Vertue, who worked on the fan vault at King's College Chapel, Cambridge and designed similar vaulting in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey. The nave was given a matching vault in the 19th century. The building is lit by 52 windows.

The dominant style of architecture in Bath is Georgian, which is an evolution of the Palladian revival style which became popular in the early 18th century. Many of the prominent architects of the day were employed in the development of the city, and as a result Bath has many fine terraces of what appear to be elegant townhouses. However, the original purpose of much of Bath's fine architecture is concealed by the honey-colored classical facades; in an era before the advent of the luxury hotel, these apparently elegant residences were frequently purpose-built rooming or lodging houses, where visitors to the city could hire a room, a floor, or (according to their means) an entire house for the duration of their visit, and be waited on by the house's communal servants.

"The Circus" is one of the most splendid examples of town planning in the city. Three long, curved terraces designed by the elder John Wood form a circular space or theatre intended for civic functions and games. The games give a clue to the design, the inspiration behind which was the Coliseum in Rome. Like the Coliseum, the three facades have a different order of architecture on each floor: Doric on the ground level, then Ionic on the piano nobile and finishing with Corinthian on the upper floor, the style of the building thus becoming progressively more ornate as it rises. Wood never lived to see his unique example of town planning completed, as he died 5 days after personally laying the foundation stone on May 18, 1754.

The best known of Bath's terraces is the Royal Crescent, built between 1767 and 1774 and designed by the younger John Wood. But all is not what it seems; while Wood designed the great curved facade of what appears to be about 30 houses with Ionic columns on a rusticated ground floor, that was the extent of his input. Each purchaser bought a certain length of the facade, and then employed their own architect to build a house to their own specifications behind it; hence what appear to be two houses is sometimes one. This system of elegant town planning is betrayed at the rear of the crescent: while the front is completely uniform and symmetrical, the rear is a mixture of differing roof heights, juxtapositions and fenestration. This "all to the front and no rear" architecture occurs repeatedly in Bath.

Circa 1770 the eminent neoclassical architect Robert Adam designed Pulteney Bridge, using as the prototype for the three-arched bridge spanning the Avon an original, but unused, design by Palladio for the Rialto Bridge in Venice. Thus Pulteney Bridge became not just a means of crossing the river, but also a shopping arcade, and, along with the Rialto Bridge, is one of the very few surviving bridges in Europe to serve this dual purpose. It has been substantially altered since it was built. It was named after Frances and William Johnstone Pulteney, the owners of the Bathwick estate for which the bridge provided a link to the rest of Bath.

The heart of the Georgian city was the Pump Room, which, together with its associated Lower Assembly Rooms, was designed by Thomas Baldwin, a local builder who was responsible for many other buildings in the city, including the terraces in Argyle Street. Baldwin rose rapidly, becoming a leader in Bath's architectural history. In 1776 he was made the chief City Surveyor, and in 1780 became City Architect. In 1776 he designed the Bath Guildhall, where his design of the interior is reputed to be one of the finest neo-classical interiors in the country. However, it is Great Pulteney Street, where he eventually lived, which is one of his finest works: this wide boulevard, constructed circa 1789 and over 300 m long and 30 m wide, is one of England's most attractive thoroughfares, and is lined on both sides by Georgian terraces.

Architecturally, Bath is one of the most balanced cities in England, and is an unusual example of coherent town planning combined with well-executed and diverse architectural styles.

Places of interest
American Museum
Assembly Rooms
Bath Abbey
Beckford's Tower
The Circus
Claverton Pumping Station
Cleveland Bridge
Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines
Great Pulteney Street
Kennet and Avon Canal
Lansdown Crescent
Museum of East Asian Art
Postal Museum
Prior Park
Pulteney Bridge
The Recreation Ground
River Avon
Roman Baths
Royal Crescent
Sally Lunn's Refreshment House & Museum The Oldest House in Bath c.1482
Solsbury Hill
St Catherine's Court
Thermae Bath Spa
William Herschel Museum

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