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The medieval Abbey sits in the centre of this historic town. The present building dates to the 17th-century as a rebuild after it was ruined during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
My Teddy in the bath. It's a little precarious taking photographs with your phone in such a damp and active environment! But we managed it...
...just!
The water which bubbles up from the ground at Bath fell as rain on the nearby Mendip Hills. It percolates down through limestone aquifers to a depth of between 2,700 metres (8,900 ft) and 4,300 metres (14,100 ft) where geothermal energy raises the water temperature to between 64 °C (147.2 °F) and 96 °C (204.8 °F). Under pressure, the heated water rises to the surface along fissures and faults in the limestone. This process is similar to an artificial one known as Enhanced Geothermal System which also makes use of the high pressures and temperatures below the Earth's crust.
The first shrine at the site of the hot springs was built by Celts and was dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva.
The name Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, leading to the town's Roman name of Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis"). The temple was constructed in 60-70 AD and the bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years. During the Roman occupation of Britain, and possibly on the instructions of Emperor Claudius, engineers drove oak piles to provide a stable foundation into the mud and surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. In the 2nd century it was enclosed within a wooden barrel-vaulted building and included the caldarium (hot bath), tepidarium (warm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath).] After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the first decade of the 5th century, these fell into disrepair and were eventually lost due to silting up and flooding. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests the original Roman baths were destroyed in the 6th century.
About 130 curse tablets have been found. Many of the curses related to thefts of clothes whilst the victim was bathing.
The baths have been modified on several occasions, including the 12th century when John of Tours built a curative bath over the King's Spring reservoir and the 16th century when the city corporation built a new bath (Queen's Bath) to the south of the Spring. The spring is now housed in 18th century buildings, designed by architects John Wood, the Elder and John Wood, the Younger, father and son. Visitors drank the waters in the Grand Pump Room, a neo-classical salon which remains in use, both for taking the waters and for social functions. Victorian expansion of the baths complex followed the neo-classical tradition established by the Woods. In 1810 the Hot Springs failed and William Smith opened up the Hot Bath Spring to the bottom, where he found that the spring had not failed but had flowed into a new channel. Smith restored the water to its original course.
The visitor entrance is via an 1897 concert hall by J M Brydon. It is an eastward continuation of the Grand Pump Room with a glass-domed centre and single-storey radiused corner. The Grand Pump Room was begun in 1789 by Thomas Baldwin. He resigned in 1791 and John Palmer continued the scheme until its completion in 1799.
Baby / bath / black & white / water. Our 3 days old daughter taking her first bath. Her look makes you wonder what she's thinking.
The Bath Abbey Footprint Project is a Heritage Lottery Fund project to repair the Abbey’s collapsing floor, install a new eco-friendly heating system using Bath’s hot springs, and provide new, improved space and facilities to ensure the Abbey is more sustainable, hospitable and useable for local residents, worshippers and visitors alike.
Wessex Archaeology will be working alongside Bath-based firm Emery to help deliver the £19.3 million Footprint Project.
For more infomation visit our website
A sidewalk prism in Bath, England, manufactured by Haywards Limited of London. The Hayward brothers were William and Edward Hayward, part of a notable family of glaziers and glass-cutters, who made the move into the ironmongery trade when they bought the business of Robert Henly in 1848. Robert Henly was an iron work specialist who had also been producing coalholes, but ill-health had led him to sell his business. The Hayward Brothers expanded the business and made their fortune not from jobbing iron-work or coalholes, but from the development and patenting of a semi-prismatic pavement light, such as the one shown here. These sidewalk prisms act as skylights to illuminate dark basement. The company seems to have gone out of business in the 1970s.
Bath is full of these old Victorian houses, some are incredibly dirty, which kind of ruins the look of them but I guess it adds to the aged look.
Random fact: Around the corner on the left of the photo is the shortest road in the UK. It's only 2 houses long with one house of each side of the road. Apparently the reason behind this was the builders ran out of money after finishing two houses and they just left it as it was.
Ethiopia. Gondar.
Lonely Planet review for Fasiladas' Bath
Around 2km northwest of town centre lies Fasiladas' Bath, a shady, beautiful and historical spot attributed to both Fasiladas and Iyasu I. Until the five-year project to fully restore the complex (financed by the Norwegian government at a cost of around Br6.4 million) is completed in 2008, we'll stop calling it peaceful too. That said, it's still worth a visit. (Note you must obtain your ticket at the Royal Enclosure before visiting.)
The large, rectangular sunken pool is overlooked by a small but charming building, thought by some to be Fasiladas' second residence. Almost out of Cambodia's Angkor Thom, snakelike tree roots envelop, support and digest sections of the stone wall surrounding the pool.
Although the complex was used for bathing (royalty used to don inflated goatskin lifejackets for their refreshing dips!), it was likely constructed for religious celebrations, the likes of which still go on today. Once a year, Fasiladas' Bath is filled with water for the Timkat . After being blessed by a priest, the pool becomes a riot of spraying water, shouts and laughter as the crowd jumps in. The ceremony replicates Christ's baptism in the Jordan River, and is seen as an important renewal of faith.
Just east of the main compound is Zobel's Mausoleum. Local legend states it's named after Yohannis I's horse, which heroically brought Iyasu (Yohannis' son) back from Sudan after his father's death.
Peal board, recording peals of PB Minor rung in 1906 and 1908
Bath (All Saints, Weston)
27 September 1906, in 2 hrs 50
5,040 Plain Bob Minor
Treble: William F. Flower
2: John Odey
3. Herbert Lewis
4. Richard J. Cousins
5. Herbert E. Holder
Tenor: William J. Prescott (C)
PB-ID: 2DA-F94
Bath (All Saints, Weston)
22 February 1908, in 2 hrs 48
5,040 Plain Bob Minor
Treble: William Seers
2: Herbert E. Holder
3. William J. Prescott
4. Charles W. Bell
5. Albert E. Seers (C)
Tenor: Thomas F. King
PB-ID: 2DA-F89