- Bath, Avon, a World Heritage City it boasts
wonderful architecture and extensive shopping facilities. Features include museums, art galleries
Roman baths and remains, Georgian architecture as well as many
tourist attractions within the immediate area.
- The reconstruction gives a good idea of how it
all looked in Roman days, and a museum displays finds from the site and elsewhere in the district. ‘the Roman baths were only rediscovered in 1879. ‘they fell into ruins or were destroyed at some date between the departure of the legions and the capture of the place by the West Saxons in 577.
‘The latter gave the city its present name, but knowledge of the Roman baths seems to have been lost during the medieval period and they were built over. In about 818) a monastery was founded; Edgar, of the house of
Wessex, was crowned King of all England in its church in 973. The Norman abbey on this Site was replaced by the present
structure, begun in 1499. Restoration work in about 1603 made good the damage
suffered at the Dissolution. Further restoration in 1860 83 included
the stone vaulting of the nave. The original vaulting of the choir is notable and the church has the fine large
windows .
- The mineral waters have continued in use for much of the city’s history; Bath is still a centre for the treatment of rheumatic diseases.
Conditions in medieval, Tudor and Stuart times were in a squalid, hut this changed in the 18th
century. when Bath became a resort for fashionable society, presided over by Beau Nash.
The work of providing a suitably elegant environment began, notably under the patronage of Ralph Allen who owned the quarries at
Combe Down.
- An abundance of parks and gardens sets off the Formality of the
Royal Crescent . A pavilion built contains a good collection
of china, glass and paintings. The Assembly Rooms, built in 1771 and bombed in 1942, have now been
restored with interior decoration by Oliver Mcssel.
- The Art
Gallery displays. paintings and coins from the local mint. There are also
evening classes and residential courses in subjects like pottery, painting, printing, dyeing.
gardening and dress-making.
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