Bath and Baths

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 3

Bath and Baths

ROM a cultural point of view, Bath is a city unique in the world. It is the most perfect example of 18th Century architecture in existence, and is irreplaceable. Never before in its long history, which dates back to Roman times, has it felt the hand of war. In. the struggle between Cavalier and Roundhead, a battle was fought on Lansdowne Hill above Bath, but the city slept peacefully on. The beginnings of

Bath are unknown. Hundreds of years before Julius Caesar crossed the Straits of Dover, there was a British settlement at Bath. The Romans found there hot springs running away into the Avon, and realised that these springs had valuable medicinal qualities. They built there a large and beautiful city which they named Aquae Solis, The Waters of the Sun, A little of that city has -been excavated, and to-day you can visit the baths to which the Roman officers came to cure their rheumatism, caught while defending the northern wall against the Picts and Scots. It is impossible to excavate the whole of Aquae Solis, because modern Bath is built on top of it, If you go down into the Roman baths, you can see long passages going out into darkness beneath the city’s foundations. As you walk down Milsom Street you walk over the top of a buried city, into which German bombs have now plunged. — (" Bath," Topical Talk, 2YA, April 27.)