Amongst my many ambitions is to desire to get to know the City of Bath better. I recently spent a morning on business there and couldn’t resist a little meander off the main high street. My quest led me down Bath Street, where facing me at the end is a near-triangular island upon which sits The Cross Bath. Nowadays it is still a spa as part of the Thermae Bath Spa.
Originally a Celtic shrine, Aquae Sulis was developed around AD 60 by the Romans as part of their public building project to create urban centres.[1] This building work developed baths and a temple around the main spring (known now as The King’s Spring). At The Cross Bath spring, a carved stone block was found depicting Aesculapian images of dogs and snakes.[2]
The Cross Bath, Hot Bath and New Royal Bath are a coherent group in the southwest sector of the city. Whilst the origins of The Cross Bath, was a Roman pool, the name originates from a cross that once stood there. By 1586 it had disappeared.[3] The legend of the cross is that it marked one of the overnight stops of the body of St. Aldhelm. He died at Doulting, Somerset in 709 or 710 and was transported in procession to Malmesbury Abbey. At each overnight resting-place a cross was erected. William of Malmesbury tells us that his body was taken back to Malmesbury from Doulting by the bishop of Worcester, Ecgwine. Ecgwine erected a stone cross every 7 miles along the route.[4]
The area was known as Bimbury in the medieval period. It is where 2 of the 3 springs originate – Hot Baths spring and Cross Bath spring. It may have originated as a secular village for the Abbey, but it continued to be associated with the healing properties of the waters.[5] In 1174, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Reginald fitz Jocelin (c. 1140-1191) founded the Hospital of St John the Baptist for the poor and sick to benefit from the waters.[6]
Figure 2: Hospital of St John the Baptist 1174
The Cross Bath was built in 1783-4 by the City Architect, Thomas Baldwin. However, the Bath Improvement Act of 1789 led to the creation of Bath Street, replacing the earlier-medieval buildings. Baldwin’s bath didn’t fit with the new Georgian-colonnaded elegance of Bath Street. The City Architect, John Palmer, who replaced Baldwin, remodelled the bath in 1789. Palmer used the existing stone and the same plan. However, he turned the building on its axis to put Baldwin’s serpentine north façade to face east.[7] The bath was then centred at the end of Bath Street. As people walked down Bath Street, the Cross Bath’s elegant façade was facing them at the west end.
Figure 3: The portico entrance on the north side
Palmer embellished the design with neo-classical Adamesque detail – Corinthian columns, dentil cornice, decorative urns and swags. The north-facing entrance portico is supported by 4-unfluted Corinthian columns. On the east façade is a Vitruvian Scroll or Wave (after Vitruvius, a 1st C Roman architect who wrote on classical architecture). The wave has a 5-petal flowers in the curve. Robert Adam favoured such devices in his pattern books.
Figure 4: Unfluted Corinthian columns, between which runs a Vitruvian Scroll
Figure 5: Detail of the Vitruvian Scroll with 5-petal flower in the curve of the wave
John Leland, on his visit to Bath in 1542 described the Cross Bath as it was then:
‘This bath is much frequented by people suffering from diseases such as leprosy, pox, skin complaints, and severe pain. It is pleasantly warm, and there are eleven or twelve stone arches along the sides where people may shelter from the rain. This bath has alleviated many skin conditions and pains…(he then mentions the Hot Bath)…These two baths adjoin St John’s Hospital, in the centre of a small street; it would be reasonable to suppose, therefore, that Bishop Reginald of Bath positioned the hospital close to these two public baths so as to assist poor people who visited them.’[8]
In the 17th C Samuel Pepys reported in his diary of bathing at the Cross Bath on Saturday, 13 June 1668. He tells us of how he, his wife and others were carried one after the other to the Cross Bath. The bathing was mixed, although he only mentions the fine ladies and the good conversation. He describes the water as being surprisingly hot and was concerned about the hygiene implications of sharing the same water with others. After 2 hours at the bath, Pepys was carried back to his bed where he sweated for an hour and then musicians came to play for him. Which he thought were almost as fine as those in London. These events happened from 4 in the morning, as at 11am he was off to Bristol. But not before paying his landlord, serjeant of the bath and the man that had arranged for him and his guests to be carried in chairs to and from the baths.[9]
I think I need to try the bath at The Cross Bath to enhance my experience and find out what the interior is like!
References
[1] Forsyth, Michael, Bath: Pevsner Architectural Guide (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 5.
[2] Forsyth, p. 6.
[3] Forsyth, p. 83.
[4] Lapidge, Michael, ‘Aldhelm [St Aldhelm] ( 709/10)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sep 2004 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/308 [accessed 16 February 2020]
[5] Forsyth, p. 14.
[6] Duggan, Charles, ‘Reginald fitz Jocelin (c. 1140-1191)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2004 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9613 [accessed 15 February 2020]
[7] Forsyth, pp. 83-4.
[8] Chandler, John, John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993), p. 407.
[9] Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, M.A. F.R.S., (London, George Bell & Sons, 1893) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4200/4200-h/4200-h.htm [accessed 16 February 2020]
Bibliography
Chandler, John, John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993)
Duggan, Charles, ‘Reginald fitz Jocelin (c. 1140-1191)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2004 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9613 [accessed 15 February 2020]
Forsyth, Michael, Bath: Pevsner Architectural Guide (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007)
Lapidge, Michael, ‘Aldhelm [St Aldhelm] ( 709/10)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sep 2004 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/308 [accessed 16 February 2020]
Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, M.A. F.R.S., (London, George Bell & Sons, 1893) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4200/4200-h/4200-h.htm [accessed 16 February 2020]
‘The Cross Bath’, Historic England List Entry 1394182, (1950), https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1394182[accessed 15 February 2020]