On the rails again: The GWR express to Bath Spa

Noble visitors to Bath

“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.”

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

In the 18th century the European high society and nobility started to appreciate to go on vacation. To improve health in a time when medical possibilities still were limited the preference for these trips went out for places which had a source of mineral water. Many of these spots already were known in ancient times and not a few had been enjoyed and developed by the Romans.

In the British Isles the Romans had found the town of Aquae Sulis. It was a walled settlement centered around a mineral hot spring of a rather unusual taste. In the 18th century the role of Bath as a health resort was reinvented. The medieval town was replaced by an entirely new, classically modern city.

At the Roman Baths

“[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.”

― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

The GWR express I have boarded has 9 carriages. I have boarded the first one in the hope it is empty and quiet. At the steep price of 18.20 pounds for the 40 minute trip it is surprising that people are able to afford the train at all. Maybe therefore I get my window seat. Soon I doze off. I wake up from the sound of a baby screaming out its disagreement with life, its mother and the world in general. A noisy mother covered in tattoos and purple hair with a big stroller has boarded the train in Swindon. The helpful guard shows her to a seat and disappears. I will get off soon anyway so I try to ignore the screaming toddler, suppress my desire for murder and focus on the landscape outside.

Local train in Bath spa station

And indeed, soon there is the announcement that the train will arrive in Bath Spa shortly. The announcement is supplemented with the information that the train is too long for the platform in Bath. Therefore the doors of the front two coaches will not open. Passengers in those two carriages getting off in Bath are required to move to the center of the train. When I get up to walk along the aisles to the third carriage I hear the mother asking herself how she should ever be able to get the stroller and the screaming baby through the train to the third carriage. I promise to send the guard for help when I get off.

People flooding off the train from London

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”

― Jane Austen

The arrival of the Great Western railway made the journey considerably easier for Bath’s important visitors. In 1840 Bath station was built, not surprisingly planned by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Great Western Railway was built with a track width of more than 2 m. After the track width was reduced to the normal gauge it left ample space between the tracks to install the masts for the planned electrification. However, in 2016 the electrification project was stopped. If you disregard the arrival of modern commerce in the form of the omnipresent chains the station still basically is unchanged from the time when it was built. I don’t know whether all these noble travelers liked the main exit towards the town down a narrow staircase. Fortunately they had not to navigate through the famous automatic gates, which are open for me for once. Originally there also was an exit at the back of the station as well, giving access to the part of town on the other side of the river Avon via a wooden bridge. This so called halfpenny bridge collapsed in 1862. Several people were killed and a new steel construction replaced the old bridge in 1877. It is still there.

Platform, Bath Spa

“Time will explain.”

― Jane Austen, Persuasion

Bath became popular as a spa town in the Georgian era. To accommodate the noble visitors extensive buildings were constructed. The better the infrastructure, the more likely it was to attract affluent visitors staying for a long time. The new town arose around the original roman baths and the cathedral built in the 12th century. Innovative forms of town planning influential for subsequent developments in the UK and beyond included street layouts called crescent or circus. Attractive views and vistas were deliberately created.

The Royal and former Argyll hotel across the station

First thing the visitor comes across when leaving the station are two grand old hotels, the Argyll and the Royal. Only the Royal still is in business. It now is one of the cheaper choices in Bath. Few people arrive by train and there is a lot of traffic at the station square. It is only a short walk to the center. Tourists wait in long queues to get rid of a double digit amount to visit the Roman baths or the cathedral. I carry on to look at those parts of the towns remarkable architecture which are free to visit and without a queue.

View of the Cathedral across the baths

Pultheney bridge

“Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.”

― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

One of the most striking examples of Bath architecture is Pulteney bridge. It was completed by 1774 under the instigation of the Pulteney family which wanted to develop their land on the other side of the river Avon. Together with Rialto bridge in Venice, Ponte Vecchio in Florence and the Krämerbrücke in Erfurt it is one of the world’s few remaining bridges with shops on both sides.

The less showy back of Pultheney bridge and....

... shops in the street above

The walk across the bridge continues into Great Pultenay street, in fact the development which was possible for the Pultenay family after the bridge was built. Built in 1789 by Georgian architect Thomas Baldwin, it is the widest, grandest thoroughfare in Bath, flanked on both sides by beautiful Georgian buildings and cars. At one end is Laura Place decorated with a fountain, at the other end stands the Holburne Museum and Sydney Gardens, the last eighteenth-century pleasure gardens in the country. Like most in Bath, all the buildings have a soutterrain. The ground floor is accessed by a bridge like entranceways.

Great Pulteney street

Bath’s architecture basically is baroque. However, at first sight the 18th century architecture of Bath appears to be much more recent. The buildings are high, the facades simple with few of the ornaments many of baroque and 19th century buildings have in other countries. The windows are big and the light brown local limestone gives a modern, clean impression.

Cheap street probably is anything but cheap

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.”

― Jane Austen, Persuasion

Most of Baths 18th century city extension climbs up the slopes above river Avon. I continue along a parking structure and cross a big parking lot to continue up to the Circus, a circle of buildings around a square built in 1754. As the name suggests it is the reference of the architect John Wood to the Roman origins of Bath. There are more historic allusions. The circus has the same diameter as the outer circular ditch in Stonehenge. 525 different carvings of Druid and Masonic symbols decorate the ground floor architraves.

The Circus

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

Jane Austen, Emma

The architects Wood, father and son, tried to incorporate landscape into their plans. The circus surrounds a circular park and the back of the building are open to gardens. The neighboring Royal Crescent built in 1767-1775 is an open semicircle with a wide view over gardens and the valley of the river Avon. The center is a square with lush green grass. A father listlessly plays soccer with his little son. “I hate soccer”, he explains. Not easy in a country of soccer fanatics.

The royal crescent

The first project of the new city was Queen square. While the later crescents have neat rows of identical houses this square is still surrounded by individual bourgeois palaces.

Queen square

Already before the rebuilding of the city the mineral spring was renowned for his medical qualities, in particular for female fertility. It did not work for Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II, in 1663. In consequence the thrown fell to the catholic heir, Charles brother James. His second wife, Mary of Modena, visited Bath in August 1687 and indeed got pregnant. Bath also was a favorite for writers looking for both a cure for their illnesses and a spot to socialise started to arrive. In 1663 the writer Samuel Pepys visited Bath and wrote: “…. methinks it cannot be clean to go so many bodies together in the same water.” More recent writing guests were Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth.

King's and Queen's baths

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Bath is most associated with the writer Jane Austen. However, 25 year old Jane was so shocked when her father decided to move the family to Bath in 1800 that she basically stopped writing. She did not like the move from the countryside into a city. However, she did like a walk in Bath’s gardens. When the father died in 1805 the remaining family was left in a precarious financial situation. The different locations in Bath associated with Jane Austen demonstrate the family’s social and financial decline. Jane and her mother and sisters started moving between different family homes. In spite of her dislike of Bath, her novels “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey” draw largely from her time in Bath. Jane Austen died in 1841, only 41 years of age. Her cleric brother managed to get her buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Bookstore in a souterrain

“A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Jame Austen was never married. However, the main topic of her novels is the role of a lady in society, in particular her role with respect to men. She had probably more occasions to study that subject in a town like Spa, then in the countryside which she would have preferred as a residence.

Fancy hotel and restaurant close to Pulteney bridge

Regardless of its stately buildings most of Spa gives a rather neglected impression. Or is it the gloomy weather? The streets are full of potholes, shops are looking for tenants and in the protected porticos house the possessions of the homeless, rough sleepers. According to the statistics published by the UK government the number of rough sleepers in England was 3069 in one night in 2022. That would be 5.4 people per 100,000. At the same time the German government counted 263000 homeless of various categories. It was also recognized by Raynor Winn in her book “the slat path” of 2018 that the British count is a bit on the low side.

Abode of a homeless in a portico

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Already in 1987 the value of the architecture of Bath was recognized by getting the UNESCO world heritage status. In 2021 UNESCO also acknowledged the value of the international European spa culture that developed from the early 18th century on. 7 of the best preserved spa towns received UNESCO monument status: Baden bei Wien (Austria); Spa (Belgium); Františkovy Lázně; Karlovy Vary; Mariánské Lázně (Czechia); Vichy (France); Bad Ems; Baden-Baden; Bad Kissingen (Germany); Montecatini Terme (Italy); and City of Bath (United Kingdom). These towns with their ensembles of spa buildings such as baths, kurhaus and kursaal, pump rooms, drinking halls, colonnades and galleries and related facilities like gardens, assembly rooms, casinos, theaters, hotels and villas in surroundings of picturesque landscape form a unique combination of human values, developments in medicine, science and balneology and architecture.

Climbing the slopes to the upper quarters of Bath

Most of these Spa towns were relying on luxury visitors. With the advent of easy long distance air traffic the places lost their most affluent clientele. On the other hand they lack the amusements the vacationer covets. There is no beach, they are in a temperate climate and there are none of the thrills the modern human expects. Instead of lounging on a bench in a drinking hall with a glass of water in his hand he prefers to hang on a bungy jumping rope, rolls down a hill in transparent balloon, looses his money in a casino, gets thrown out of a derailed roller coaster or at least gets pissed while pub hopping. Not only in many of the Spa towns, but also in old fashioned traditional resorts, big hotels and restaurants had to close. While in the 19th century emperors met in places like Bad Ischl in Austria or Bad Ems in Germany modern leaders confer in high security resorts. Some of the old resorts managed successful structural changes, turned hotels into apartments and even built the odd attraction park others decayed to an almost ghost town status.

Restaurant entrance

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

Jane Austen, Emma

As such the UNESCO award was probably given to the wrong places. While Bath now is one of the few UNESCO monuments enjoying double status and a German resort town like Baden-Baden attracts plenty of guests to its casino, others like Semmering or Bad Gastein in Austria or many of the little Spa towns in Germany fight for survival.

Annually Bath counts more than one million guests staying and 3.8 million day trippers. They all seem to be here with me on this Sunday evening. In vain I try to find a table in one of the more respectable restaurants. They are empty, the tables are set, but without reservation I am not welcome. I take another GWR express to go back to the less top notch Swindon to have a decent dinner.