Bath: A Walk Through Roman Springs, Georgian Crescents and Hillside Views
Bath is one of those rare cities where two thousand years of history are compressed into a few square miles. Roman engineers, medieval masons, Georgian developers and even Waitrose (its a more of a religion than a supermarket in Bath) have all left their mark on the picturesque valley beside the River Avon.
For an architect, it is difficult not to be drawn to the way the city is put together. The warm golden stone, the disciplined terraces, the sudden open spaces and the way buildings climb the surrounding hills all combine to create one of the most coherent historic cityscapes in Britain.
As a Architect and with relations living there, in Bath mainly but often in Waitrose, its a special place. Indeed i still get a funny feeling in my tummy as the train approaches Bath Spa Station and the valley opens up before me. A truly beautiful place.
This survey follows a loose architectural walk through the city: beginning below ground among the Roman remains, rising through the medieval Abbey and Georgian streets, and ending on the hills above, where the crescents, towers and country estates look back over the valley.
The Roman Core
Bath began as Aquae Sulis, a Roman settlement built around Britain’s only natural hot springs. The Romans recognised the extraordinary potential of the site and created a temple and bathing complex that became one of the most important religious and social centres in Roman Britain.
The Roman Baths
The Roman Baths remain the emotional and historical heart of the city. Beneath the present street level lies a remarkable complex of pools, vaulted chambers and engineering works, developed from the first century AD onwards.
The Great Bath is the most memorable space. Its green, mineral-rich water is still fed by the hot spring, and steam rises from its surface on cold mornings. The surrounding Victorian terrace and statues of Roman emperors were added in the late nineteenth century, but they frame the ancient pool in a way that has become part of the popular image of the site.
Roman visitors left more than coins in the sacred spring. Lead tablets, often inscribed with messages to the goddess Sulis Minerva, were thrown into the water. Some are polite requests; others are remarkably direct complaints about theft and personal grievances. They give an unusually intimate glimpse of everyday Roman life.
The King’s Bath and Queen’s Bath
Above the Roman remains, the King’s Bath and Queen’s Bath show how Bath continued to use its springs long after the Roman period. The King’s Bath developed from medieval origins and was altered through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while the Queen’s Bath was added in the 1570s.
These were not simply bathing pools. They were social spaces, where visitors took the waters, met friends, listened to music and observed the fashionable world around them. The statue of King Bladud, the legendary founder of Bath, adds another layer of myth to a place already rich in history.
Bath Abbey
A few steps away, Bath Abbey rises above Abbey Churchyard. Its Perpendicular Gothic windows, pinnacles and stone vaulting make it one of the defining landmarks of the city.
The present church was begun in 1499 under Bishop Oliver King, on the site of an earlier cathedral. Its celebrated west front shows angels climbing ladders towards heaven, a reference to Bishop King’s reported dream that inspired the rebuilding.
The nave fan vaulting seen today was completed during Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Victorian restoration, following the original medieval design. It gives the interior a remarkable sense of lightness, with stone ribs spreading across the ceiling like inverted fans.
Sally Lunn’s
Nearby, in North Parade Passage, Sally Lunn’s is one of Bath’s most atmospheric old buildings. Its actually a timber-framed house, which was later clad in stone. It is often described as the oldest surviving house in the city and stands above Roman and medieval remains.
Its name is associated with Sally Lunn, a French Huguenot refugee who arrived in Bath in the late seventeenth century and became linked with the famous rich bun that still carries her name. The bun's origins are debated, is it French or English?
Whatever the exact truth of the story, the building itself is a reminder that Bath’s history is not only grand and classical, it is also domestic, culinary and deeply local (with Waitrose)
The Georgian City
In the eighteenth century, Bath was transformed from a medieval spa town into one of the most fashionable resorts in Britain. This was in no small part due to some pretty savvy buiness moves underpinned by a vision.
Ralph Allen controlled the local stone quarries and helped make Bath stone available on a large scale. The Woods, father and son, provided the architectural vision. Together, they created a city of squares, circuses, crescents and terraces that still defines Bath today.Often desigining whole buildings but then selling indivivdual plots of land to owners who built parts in accordance with the plans.
Queen Square
Queen Square, laid out by John Wood the Elder in the 1720s, was an early and influential piece of Georgian urban planning. Its unified facades created the sense of a single architectural composition rather than a collection of individual houses.
The square established an idea that would be developed more dramatically elsewhere in Bath that a group of ordinary townhouses could be made to read as a palace, a temple or a classical composition. This is similar to the Georgian Square's of London.
The Circus
The Circus is one of Bath’s most extraordinary architectural inventions. Begun by John Wood the Elder in 1754 and completed by his son in 1768, it consists of a continuous ring of townhouses arranged around a circular space.
The facade is organised in three tiers, with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders rising one above the other. The effect is deliberately classical, but the building is not a copy of antiquity. It is a highly original piece of urban design, turning the idea of a Roman amphitheatre into a residential circle.
Wood the Elder was deeply interested in ancient history and Druidic symbolism, and the Circus has often been linked in popular accounts with Stonehenge (its the same circumference). The building has a ritual, almost ceremonial quality that makes it feel unlike an ordinary street.
The Royal Crescent
From the Circus, Brock Street leads directly to the Royal Crescent, perhaps the most famous piece of Georgian architecture in Britain.
Designed by John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1775, the Crescent consists of thirty houses arranged in a vast sweeping curve. Its 114 Ionic columns rise above a rusticated ground floor, creating a facade of such sweeping power set against beutiful gardens.
The perfection is partly an illusion. The front elevation was carefully controlled, each resident having to follow the vision. However, behind it the individual houses can do whatever they want. It is amazing to think that this is a collection of 30 completelt different houses held in architectural unity.
Beckford’s Tower
High on Lansdown Hill, Beckford’s Tower offers a very different view of Bath. Built in the 1820s for the writer and collector William Beckford, it was designed by Henry Goodridge as a private retreat and study tower.
Its slender stone form, classical details and gilded lantern make it one of the most distinctive buildings on the skyline. From here, the city below appears as a compact composition of roofs, spires and terraces, with the hills closing around it.
Beckford was a colourful and eccentric figure, best known for his novel Vathek and for the extraordinary Gothic pile he built at Fonthill. The tower at Lansdown is a quieter but no less personal monument: a place for books, art and solitude above the city.
Estates, Gardens and the Wider Valley
Wander beyond the central streets and Bath soon opens out into a wider landscape of parks, gardens and country houses. These places are essential to understanding the city, because Bath was never simply an urban composition; it was also a product of its stone, hills and topography.
Prior Park and the Palladian Bridge
Prior Park, above the city on the southern slopes, was developed by Ralph Allen from the 1730s. Allen was the entrepreneur behind the large-scale exploitation of Bath stone, and Prior Park became both a private estate and a demonstration of what the material could achieve.
The house is a grand Neo-Palladian composition, but the landscape is equally important. The gardens were shaped with advice from Alexander Pope and probably, Capability Brown. The landscape style moves away from formal geometry towards a more natural English landscape style.
The Palladian Bridge, built in 1755, is the estate’s most celebrated feature. It combines an arched crossing with a classical upper structure, creating a building that is both bridge and garden pavilion. There is actulaaly another one i believe or even two elsewhere in Britain (I need to do more research!)
The Holburne Museum
At the end of Great Pulteney Street, the Holburne Museum provides a fitting architectural full stop to one of Bath’s grandest Georgian vistas. Originally built as the Sydney Hotel in the late eighteenth century, it was later converted into a public art gallery. This is my favourite building in Bath with a modern extention by Eric Parry architects which is unashamedly modern and yet fits beautifully with the Museum.
Behind the building, Sydney Gardens preserve something of the Regency pleasure-ground atmosphere, with walks, trees and the remains of a landscape designed for public entertainment. Jane Austen lived nearby in Sydney Place and knew these gardens well.
The American Museum and Gardens
Across the valley at Claverton, the American Museum and Gardens occupies a handsome early nineteenth-century mansion overlooking the Limpley Stoke Valley. The house, built in Bath stone, has the calm classical presence typical of Regency country architecture.
The museum was founded in the twentieth century to display American decorative arts, folk art and historic textiles. Its gardens are inspired by George Washington’s garden at Mount Vernon.
A City Built in Stone
What makes Bath so compelling is not simply the quality of its individual buildings, impressive though they are. It is the way they belong together, one big set piece!
Part of that is architectural style but one common material gives the city a visual unity that few places can match. It also allows for harmonious change, differrnt styles but the same buttery stone.
These watercolours are my attempt to capture that continuity, the stone, the light, the geometry and the atmosphere of a city where architecture is never just background, but the main event together with Waitrose!
About the Artwork
About the Artist Christian Coop, MSAI, is an architect and artist documenting the UK’s built heritage through one of the largest contemporary collections of architectural watercolours. With 30 years of experience an architect and a Design Director at leading global firms, his work has been featured by CNN, the BBC, and the RIBA Journal. He is currently an Associate Partner and Design Director at HTA.
Popular subjects include the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, the Circus, the Royal Crescent, Prior Park, the Holburne Museum and Beckford’s Tower. Bespoke commissions are also available for historic Bath townhouses, country estates and wedding venues throughout Somerset and the Cotswolds.
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