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A Tour Through Bath With Jane Austen

September 1, 2010 by Vic

Inquiring Readers, Tony Grant has been contributing articles to Jane Austen Today for several months. Recently, Tony and his family traveled to Bath and the West Country. This is one of many posts he has written about his journey. Tony also has published several posts about his trip on this blog: Going to Bath With Jane Austen and The Servant’s Entrance to Regency Townhouses, for which he supplied the photographs. He has already contributed a post about Milsom Street for Jane Austen Today. This post about his tour through Bath was first published on Jane Austen Today, but the images caused the sidebar to be pushed out of sight, so I placed it here.

Bath Thoroughfare
Jane Austen knew Bath extremely well. Throughout Persuasion and Northanger Abbey she houses her characters in real streets and in real buildings, although she does avoid giving us the number of the house in such and such a street. The real owners and occupants might not have liked the notoriety. And today they might not like the notoriety as well. Was there such a thing as litigation in the 18th century? I’m sure there was.

Pultney Bridge

Here are some of the places that Janes characters lived in and when you go to Bath you can see them for yourself.

  • Anne Elliot and her father lived in Camden Place up the hill at the top of the town.
  • Lady Russel lived in Rivers Street just north of The Circus.
  • Rich, Mrs Wallis lived in Marlborough Gardens on the hill leading down from the north end of The Royal Crescent.
  • Catherine Moreland lived in Pultney Street, which is now called Great Pultney Street, very close to Sydney Street. I wonder if Jane saw somebody in Pultney Street that she thought, “ah, that’s Catherine Moreland.”
  • The Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple lived in Laura Place at the end of Great Pultney Street and at the start of Pultney Bridge.

The meeting places and places central to both novels are Milsom Street where everybody shops. Shopping, the bain of my life. My wife and three daughters love shopping. Shopping could be their lives. In Jane’s time tooapparently. It makes me come out in a cold sweat thinking about it. The amount of standing in shops and outside of shops I’ve done.

God, I’ve suffered for shopping over the years.

Ah, that’s better. I needed that rant.

Also the Pump room. What a glorious place it is. I felt a tingle down my spine as I my wife, Abigail and myself were shown to our seats by the headwaiter and we were graciously handed the menus. A trio of musicians, cello, pianist and violinist, played sedately at one end of the room. People lined up at the water pump to imbibe Baths greatest commodity, water from the spring and we ordered tea and cakes.

Pump room window
The “pump room blend” of tea is as close as you can get to the blend of tea that Jane Austen, Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot would have drunk. The scones with clotted cream and fresh strawberry jam were exquisite. The tea was delicious and there I was with my family, in THE PUMP ROOM!!!!!!

The Pump Room

I could almost see Catherine Morland pop in to see if she could find Henry Tilney and of course take a few turns of the room to see and be seen. I knew nobody in The Pump Room just as Catherine knew nobody.

Bath Abbey


Then we had a look inside Bath Abbey. Jane seems to have not attended services at the abbey. She preferred The Octagon. This was a newly built chapel in Jane’s day. She seems to have preferred churches where the incumbent vicar had new and fresh ideas to deliver in his sermons.

Cheap Street
After Bath Abbey we walked through the passageway that leads from the churchyard opposite The Pump Rooms, called Union Passage and into Cheap Street. It is the very passage that Catherine Moreland walked through with Miss Thorpe and suddenly sees a carriage with her brother and coincidently Miss Thorpe’s brother too, the awful John Thorpe. It is their first fateful meeting.

George Street outside Edgar Buildings

We walked on up Milson Street to George Street where Edgar Buildings are situated. Edgar Buildings are where the Thorpes stayed.

25 Gay Street

From George Street we went into Gay Street and walked past number 25 where the Austens stayed for a while.

At the top of Gay Street is the magnificent, The Circus. This is a circle of the most magnificent Georgian Houses. There is a small green park in the centre of the circle in which grow four gigantic London Plains trees. They must be four or five hundred years old. Jane knew them. The portrait artist Gainsborough lived in one of these houses in The Circus for a while. Bath would have provided many opportunities to gain commissions and make money.

The Royal Crescent

From The Circus we turned down Brock Street and arrived at The Crescent at the top of the hill.

A front door at the Royal Crescent


This was the place where the elite lived. These were the largest and most expensive houses. Lords, Dukes and the very wealthy lived up here. It was also a good place to walk to get fresh air.

The back of the Crescent, each house is different
Jane mentions in her letters taking walks up to The Crescent and walking in the park and enjoying the views. Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot also walked there. There is a very good reason why Jane and her characters might want to walk here, the fresh air. If you look back over Bath you can see the beautiful city with its creamy yellow stonework In Jane’s time it would have been black. You will also notice the myriads of chimneys, which no longer spout black sooty smoke from thousands of coal fires. Coal is no longer burnt. We have clean air towns and cities nowadays. In Jane’s time the air was far from clean and the beautiful Cotswold stone became black. You can see today a building or two that have not had their surface cleaned since the clean air act was passed through parliament.

The Assembly Rooms

The Assembly Rooms, just north of The Circus, are what Jane and her characters knew as The Upper Assembly Rooms and also included the Octagon tearoom. This is where Catherine Morland met with the Thorpes.

The Lower Assembly Rooms, the original assembly rooms in Bath, where Beau Nash officiated , were situated near the abbey. They no longer exist. It was in the Lower Assembly Rooms that Catherine met Henry Tilney for the first time and fell in love.
Just to conclude, a couple of stories about Bath.

Sheridan eloped with Elizabeth from this house

In the Crescent , about half way round, is a house with plaque that relates a very dramatic story. In 1755 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was a great playwright in the 18th century and wrote The Rivals and School for Scandal and who was also the owner of the Covent Garden Theatre, absconded with a young lady from the house. Her father chased them all over Europe. When they were found the father made Sheridan marry his daughter. However soon after Richard Brinsley left her in the lurch. The chase was the thing. The excitement of the chase had gone. What a cad and bounder!!!!!

Tony at Pultney Bridge

Now, a story about myself. As we walked up Gay Street towards The Circus we obviously stopped outside number 25 to look at it and photograph ourselves outside. An irate and very upset looking lady marched out of the front door next to number 25 with a bowl full of water and threw it all over my legs. I must add this does not normally happen to me. The circumstances were, that some juvenile idiot had drawn rude graffiti over the side of her white van parked outside. She was trying to clean the words off. She was obviously upset and came out to wash the side of her vehicle. Unfortunately for me, she missed. She was SO sorry. Luckily it was a warm day and my trousers dried quickly in the walk up the hill.

The Royal Crescent (top) and the Circus (Bottom with trees at center.)

One fact before I finish. Did you know that the houses in The Crescent and in The Circus are all different? They all look the same because they are the same on the outside. The builder built the fronts and sold just the fronts. The new owners had to build their own backs to their houses. Hence, if you go round behind the houses in The Crescent they all look different.

Posted by Tony Grant, London Calling

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Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen's World, Regency Life, Regency style, Regency Travel, Regency World | Tagged Bath, Bath Tour, Tony Grant | 11 Comments

11 Responses

  1. on September 1, 2010 at 10:18 Michelle Leising

    Tony, THANK YOU for the lovely photos and sharing your Bath travels. I have never been to England and one day hope to travel there and experience it myself. Your detailed descriptions and photos truly helped me imagine what it was like to be there. Michelle,
    The Twiggery
       


  2. on September 1, 2010 at 16:19 Cenya

    Loved seeing pics of Bath, a most beloved city. I was a little disappointed though that there were no pictures of the Weir, but then thought that maybe the weir wasn’t there is Jane’s time and that’s why it wasn’t included.
    Another item I found fascinating in Bath were the rather creepy angels that were climbing downward on the Jacob’s Ladder on the front of the Abbey.


  3. on September 1, 2010 at 17:07 Sharon Warren

    Thank you so much for this wonderful article and for including photographs. The photographs made my memories of “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey” come to life. More of the same, if you have it. Pleassseeeee!


  4. on September 1, 2010 at 20:02 Tony Grant

    Cenya, I have a got a picture of the weir next to Pultney Bridge. However, I presume that it was a Victorian addition to keep one part of the river at the right depth for canal boats.I didn’t include it in the post because it isn’t connected with Jane’s time.

    All the best,
    Tony


  5. on September 1, 2010 at 22:51 Karen Field

    Awesome! This was just awesome! I was just there 3 weeks ago and took pictures of most of the same sites but the ones I didn’t think to get, you did! What a pleasure to revisit the trip of a lifetime for me. I also felt that same thrill you described. Thank you for doing this!


  6. on September 2, 2010 at 00:21 Mary Simonsen

    Oh, those assembly rooms. How could you not feel like a princess when you were in them? Tony, I was going to ask you to go into every shop in Bath and look for a particular tea cup and saucer set that I saw there about twenty years ago. I was going to send you a very detailed description, and then I find out you don’t like to shop! Oh darn! LOL Great pictures, as usual.


  7. on September 2, 2010 at 05:45 Tony Grant

    Thank you everyone for your lovely comments.

    Mary, don’t tell anyone, I DID feel like a princess in the assembly rooms.

    Thank you for understanding about the shopping thing.

    Tony


  8. on September 3, 2010 at 15:52 Nicola

    Enjoyed the lovely pics of Bath. I’ve made a couple of literary pilgrimages there myself. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that Austen wasn’t fond of Bath which I find odd as it is so beautiful.


  9. on September 4, 2010 at 04:37 Tony Grant

    Hi Nicola.
    I wrote another post for, Jane Austen’s World, called,
    “Going To Bath With Jane Austen.”
    I used quotes from her letters to help me make a few points about Jane and Bath. You might get a sense and idea of what she felt about Bath from that post.

    All the best,
    Tony


  10. on September 8, 2010 at 19:38 Arti

    Tony, you’ve some wonderful photos of Bath, thanks! Your London Calling blog is great! I too have the chance to revisit Bath recently and this time I went looking for places mentioned in Persuasion. Much gratified to find some of them like Camden Crescent (older days Camden Place), The Assembly Rooms, and some tidbit about the chandeliers in the Ball Room nearly fell on Gainsborough… etc. Just posted. Vic, thanks for these most interesting posts!


  11. on September 12, 2010 at 13:57 Anna

    What a thorough post on Bath! Thanks for sharing this.

    It never crossed my mind how dark and different Bath must have looked, with black soot covering the limestone. Another reason, perhaps, to add to Jane’s dislike of Bath…



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