Bath: Roman baths, Georgian money and an emperor in exile
Bath is the most beautiful city in England, and it knows it. Hot water has risen from the ground here for thousands of years; the Romans built a temple and baths around it, and the Georgians built a whole city of honey-coloured stone for the rich who came to take the waters. Some of that money came from sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. And in the 1930s an African emperor, driven from his country by Mussolini, found refuge on a hill above the city.
Key facts
- Roman Baths tickets: prices change with the date and time slot, roughly £22 to £32 for an adult; weekdays are cheaper; booking online saves £2; an audio guide is included; £1 tickets for UK visitors on Universal Credit and some other benefits
- Roman Baths hours: daily, usually from 9:00 or 9:30; closed Christmas Day and Boxing Day
- Getting there: direct trains from London Paddington to Bath Spa, about 1 hour 20 minutes; the station is a short walk from the centre
- Free: walking the city, the Royal Crescent and the Circus from outside, Pulteney Bridge, the parks
- Fairfield House: Haile Selassie's home in exile, open for guided tours on Sundays (12:00 and 13:30), in the Newbridge area west of the centre
The Roman Baths
Hot water, about 46°C, rises from the ground here at more than a million litres a day. The Celts worshipped the spring's goddess, Sulis; the Romans who arrived in the first century AD identified her with their own Minerva, built a temple and a great bathing complex, and called the town Aquae Sulis.
Today you walk through the remains: the steaming green Great Bath under the open sky, surrounded by later Georgian statues of Roman emperors; the temple courtyard with the gilded bronze head of Minerva; hot rooms with the stacks of tiles that held up the heated floors. Don't miss the curse tablets: small sheets of lead on which Romans scratched curses against thieves who had stolen their clothes while they bathed, and threw them into the sacred spring.
Swim in the spring: Thermae Bath Spa
You cannot bathe in the Roman Baths, but you can at Thermae Bath Spa, a few streets away. It is the only place in Britain where you can bathe in natural hot spring water, and its open-air rooftop pool looks over the towers of Bath Abbey. Sessions cost roughly £40 to £50 for two hours, more at weekends, and the queues can be long. The best time is the evening, when the steam rises against the lit-up abbey.
Georgian Bath: the city of fashion
In the 18th century Bath became the place where Britain's rich and fashionable came to take the waters, dance, gamble and arrange marriages. Architects John Wood the Elder and his son built a new city for them in pale gold Bath stone: the Circus, a ring of grand houses, and the Royal Crescent, a curving terrace of thirty houses facing a park. No. 1 Royal Crescent is a museum showing how a wealthy Georgian household lived, upstairs and downstairs. Jane Austen lived in Bath and set parts of two novels here.
- Bath Abbey: the great church beside the Roman Baths; climb the tower for the view.
- Pulteney Bridge: one of very few bridges in the world lined with shops on both sides, over the weir on the River Avon.
- The Assembly Rooms: where Georgian society danced and played cards.
Where the money came from
The guidebooks call it elegance. Much of it was paid for with sugar. Georgian Bath was full of families whose fortunes came from Caribbean plantations worked by enslaved Africans, and from the trade that supplied them. They came to Bath to spend it, to marry into the old aristocracy and to be seen.
The best-known is William Beckford, whose immense inherited wealth came from his family's sugar plantations in Jamaica. He retired to Bath and built Beckford's Tower on Lansdown Hill above the city, a monument to his taste and his money. When slavery was abolished in the British colonies in 1833, the government paid compensation to the slave owners, not to the people they had enslaved. Many of those payments went to people living in and around Bath.
Read how the same money shaped the capital in London, sugar and slavery: the Docklands and the Royal African Company.
Haile Selassie in Bath
In 1936 Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia with poison gas and bombers. Emperor Haile Selassie went into exile, spoke before the League of Nations in Geneva, and came to Britain. He settled in Bath, and from 1936 to 1941 he, his family and his staff lived at Fairfield House, a Victorian villa on Kelston Road. The people of Bath grew fond of the emperor walking through their streets. In 1941, with British and African troops, he returned to Ethiopia and took back his throne.
He never forgot Bath. He later gave Fairfield House to the city as a home for elderly people. Today the house is run by Fairfield House Bath CIC, a not-for-profit company. It is a day centre for older members of Bath's Black and minority ethnic communities, a place of pilgrimage for Rastafarians, and a small museum to the emperor. Guided tours run on Sundays at 12:00 and 13:30, often followed by a Caribbean lunch.
It is the most moving thing to see in Bath, and almost no day trip goes there. Take the number 19 bus, or walk about 40 minutes from the centre along the river. Book ahead through the house.
Plan your Bath day
- Morning: the first slot at the Roman Baths, then the Abbey next door.
- Midday: walk up to the Circus and the Royal Crescent; lunch in the lanes.
- Afternoon: Pulteney Bridge and the river, or on a Sunday, Fairfield House.
- Evening: the rooftop pool at Thermae Bath Spa before the train back to London.
The verdict
Bath is worth more than the two hours a coach tour gives it. Come by train, give it a whole day, see the Roman Baths early and leave time for the Royal Crescent, a soak in the spa and, if you can, Sunday at Fairfield House. It is beautiful, crowded, expensive and full of history that most visitors walk straight past.
Tours to Bath
Many day trips from London combine Bath with Stonehenge and Windsor, such as this Stonehenge, Windsor Castle and Bath day trip. Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
Read next
The famous stone circle and the bigger, free one you can touch.
The world wars, and the African and Caribbean soldiers who fought them.
The Docklands and the Royal African Company.
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