So off to the train station with us bright and early! We talk to the Bristol Parkway train attendant to make sure that we get the correct arrangements and get on the correct train - and away we go!
We arrive in Bath with no problems and I pull out my small map of Bath (courtesy of the online map function on Bath Cathedral's website - thank you!) and note the general direction we need to head. After all, how lost can we get, we're heading to the center of town and stopping at the Roman Baths which are right outside the Cathedral so the spires should give the location away.
We get squared away, take off our ponchos and obtain our audio tour for the Roman Baths and in we go for this archaeological study. The Baths were in use not only during the Roman times but again in the 17th Century and then were rediscovered in the 19th century. They are the most intact of all the Roman baths and thus their popularity.
In some of the pictures, you may see steam or fog, although it was slightly chilly because of the rain, the steam actually comes from the hot spring itself which STILL feeds these Baths.
The orange line you see into the alcoves in the above picture is the water line where the water used to be during the Bath's use of the 17th century. The Baths throughout the ages has believed to have healing properties.
During Roman times it was said that the Baths were probably some of the best locations for business meetings, etc. much like we use the Golf Course today.
Once again I was amazed at Roman ingenuity. They used fluting in their roof to disperse the load so to span the great baths.
They fed the hot spring into a variety of baths throughout the complex with water supply feeds and gutters and drainage systems
The Baths at this location offered rooms with heated floors and walls to act as saunas and for massages. The floors and walls are being heated through (for all intensive purposes, ducted heat.
The floor of the above room would have been built on top of the stacks of stone to allow the warm air to circulate below the floor.
And their Mosaic tile work was spectacular
The bath which holds the spring water until it can be circulated to the other baths and some of the larger baths are lined in lead so the precious water would not be lost. Therefore the Romans were the first to have lined swimming pools.
Before we left the Roman Baths, Lisa convinced me to try the "taste test" they had going in the pump room. This is where you can get a glass of water which has been pumped from the hot spring. The liquid was relatively clear and was slightly warmer than body temperature but not "hot". Upon the taste, it was obvious that it still held all the minerals and such that it always had and I have to say that I didn't much care for it, but Lisa didn't think it was too bad. I will admit that neither one of us took more than a sip, so the glass-full was slightly wasted.
Since our primary reason to come to Bath was the Costume Museum, that was next on our list! We opted to stop at Subway for a quick bite to eat before we located the Costume Museum and it was a good meal refortifying us for the remainder of our day. On our walk to the Museum we passed a WH Smith selling pocket sized umbrellas and opted for the prudent purchase.
When we reached the Costume Museum we wrung out our ponchos and tucked them away in our bags, shook out our umbrellas and tucked them into another pocket before we picked up our audio tour and proceeded into the exhibition halls. I was elated to find that they'd changed both the layout and several of the items on display. This means that I can easily go many times and always seem something different. On the downside though, they did take out some of their older, very impressive pieces such as an Elizabethan chemise done in blackwork. But the new exhibits were VERY good!
After being very impressed with their new interactive display on corseting and hoops, and lending our aid and expertise to some pre-teens trying these items on over their clothing, we proceeded to find the new Glove display currently on loan from the Glovers Society. The gloves were 16th and 17th Century and were BEAUTIFULLY decorated. We were unable to take any pictures in this portion of the exhibit and so I opted for the post card pack. And then the exhibit got better!
We entered a room that was kind of a "fashion through history" type of perspective and they started with 1790, then 1820, then 1840,
1850,
1860,
1870,
1880,
And even featured a dress from Queen Victoria's wardrobe (approximately 1890). We'd never realized how vertically challenged she was, but we estimate she must have been around 4'-10" (but no taller than 5'-0").
Ok, I'll admit that at the point at which we started seriously looking at these dresses and comparing them to what we do for American Civil War, we probably annoyed some of the other patrons. We looked at piping (where was it and where was it not), hem savers, collars, cuffs, tucks, sewing techniques and even profiles. Okay, okay, so we spent a lot of time in this room . . but we were thrilled with the results. And it put a much needed reminder in my head that I should really contact Bath's Museum of Costume and see if I can get a separate research viewing to photograph stuff that isn't necessarily on display full with seams, etc. But enough about that for this blog.
Having finished with the clothing and needing to rest our feet for a little and take it all in, we rested on a bench in the gathering hall. At which point Lisa realized that this was one of the halls spoken about in Jane Austin's books and so we set about exploring the rest of the halls as they were available and open. The ball-room hall was quite interesting as it was round and there were mirrors placed all about so that you could always see who was in the room and where they were . . we played a little bit with that, taking our picture through a couple of mirror refractions
Then we explored some of the other halls and Lisa re-retrieved her audio tour.
Once all the halls had been visited we decided to amble our way back toward the train station seeing whatever happened across our path as we did so.
We were early for our train but decided to see about catching an earlier one to be sure that we arrived in plenty of time in Cardiff. This ended up being a good plan because it allowed us to get a quick bite to eat at Burger King before David was due to pick us up for practice.
Thus ends our exploration of Bath. For all the pictures we took you can view the slideshow below:
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