Bath, South West England

Britain has one thermal hot spring which was used by the Romans, who created an extensive network of baths for their use, in what has become known as the town of Bath for obvious reasons. However even before the Romans arrival, when this area was ruled by an Iron Age tribe called the Dobunni, it was believed that the hot spring was sacred to the Goddess Sulis. 

After the Romans landed on the south coast of England in AD43 and began conquering the south eastern territories, they protected their newly conquered lands by building a wide military zone, which stretched across England from Exeter to Lincoln, The boundary of which was a military road, now known as the Fosse Way. This main throughfare was intersected by other, smaller, roads. One of these intersections was near what is now the city of Bath.

It is thought the Romans decided to tame what was then a natural large body of warm water, around AD70 or shortly thereafter. The construction could only begin once the land around the area was drained and dried out. The hydraulic and engineering skills applied by the Romans, show just how advanced they were. They began by consolidating the unstable ground with oak piles driven deep into the mud. They then enclosed the spring within a massive reservoir wall, two metres high, and lined it with lead sheets to make it watertight. The reservoir would provide a head of water to feed the baths, and it would also serve as a settling tank for the sediment, which would prevent it from blocking the narrow pipes. When the Romans left Britain, they may have taken many of their skills with them, but the extensive waterways they left behind were learned from, they were there to be studied. The reason that Monastic communities had such good systems of water and drainage is because they learned from the Romans.

At Bath, the rate of the flow of water at the hot spring is 13 litres per second or 1,106,400 litres a day. This comes to the surface at a temperature of 46 C, or 115 F. The water comprises 43 minerals, of which Calcium and Sulphate are prominent. While low in dissolved metals, it is high in iron, which causes orange staining. The water today still flows through the channels that the Romans created. Roman bathhouses provided a place for social interactions. People would meet with clients and friends alike. They would listen to lectures, play board games, gamble, eat and drink; they were basically the coffee houses of the Romans. What is unique about Bath, is that it was also known for its curative properties, due to the hot springs with its mineral waters. Bath was a Roman tourist location, and people would travel here to cure themselves of many different ailments.

In the middle ages, there was a belief in the power of the thermal waters which emerged in the legend of the prehistoric Prince Bladud. It is said that Bladud contracted leprosy and was banished from his father’s court. He found work as a local swine herder, and noticed that his pigs went to wallow in a steaming swamp in a valley. When they emerged, they were cleansed of their warts and sores, which convinced him that his own condition could also be cured. He plunged himself into the thermal waters and scrambled out without a blemish, having been cured of his leprosy, and was afterwards accepted back into his father’s court. In his gratitude, he founded the city of Bath round the spring. Now while this is certainly legend, it does also tell us that it was thought in the middle ages that the waters had healing properties.

While little is known about how the Roman baths were used in the middle ages, we do know that bathing was important to medieval man also. The taboo of hiding ones body is a modern, possibly Victorian, concept. Although the church never liked the idea of public bathhouses, and openly condemned them as sinful, they existed throughout the middle ages. St. Boniface issued a prohibition against mixed nude bathing in 745, but it did little to curb their use. There is plenty of pictorial evidence of medieval communal bathing, even if some bath houses were little more than brothels. The term ‘stewhouse' referred to both public baths and brothels. The nature of bathing in the middle ages is well put by this unknown contemporary voice:

Wine, women, baths, by art or nature warm,

Used or abused do men much good or harm.

The tradition of taking mineral baths as a medical treatment went on, and in the late 17th Century, doctors were recommending drinking the water as a remedy for internal conditions. The first Pump Room opened in Bath in 1706, and it placed drinking prescribed quantities of the water at the heart of its establishment. The present Pump Room opened in 1795, and stands directly next to the Great Bath. Here you can still purchase some very high priced, and horrible tasting mineral water.