Did You Know?

Bath is located in the County of Somerset, its main natural spring was treated as a shrine by early Britons. On the arrival of the Romans in the first century, they constructed a temple over the spring and built it up into a collection of baths, from which the city’s name derives.

Everyone knows that Bath is home to literary legend Jane Austen, but it’s also the city that inspired Mary Shelley to finish writing Frankenstein.

Bath hosted the first ever farmers’ market in 1987. A regular farmers’ market can still be found at Green Park Station on Saturday mornings.

The Roman name for Bath is Aquae Sulis. The city was named Aquae Sulis because the people would travel there to worship Sulis Minerva, a Roman goddess.

6 May 1840 was the official first day of adhesive postage stamp circulation. The postal system was transformed by the famous Penny Black. But it was Thomas Moore Musgrave, Bath postmaster who sent the first stamp a few days early on 2 May before they were officially allowed.

The Saracen’s Head, one of the oldest pubs in Bath, was visited by Charles Dickens in 1835.

Pulteney Bridge is one of Bath’s biggest attractions, not only because of its fine architecture but because it’s one of only four bridges in the world to have shops across both sides.

In 1781, from his humble home in BA1, using a telescope of his own design, William Herschel discovered the planet that is the butt of so many jokes. His observations made him an award-winning astronomer. He helped to double the known size of the solar system and push forward the science in building telescopes as we know them today.

There’s a bar in Bath called Sleight, where magicians perform live magic tricks. If you’re looking for a unique experience, this bar is definitely worth a visit. 

While plenty of places in Britain have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Bath is the only city in the UK where the entire city is a heritage site. It fits Criterion (i) for its Roman and 18th and 19th Century architecture.

The Royal Crescent in Bath is a row of 30 terraced houses in the city that was built between 1767 and 1774, designed by John Wood the Younger. It’s one of the city’s most excellent pieces of Georgian architecture, and as much as it is lauded, it’s not the only such crescent in the city, as there are a total of seven similar structures.

The reason for Bath’s hot springs is that the city sits in the mouth of a long-dormant volcano. The caldera that formed the city has been extinct for many millennia, but the thermal heat still makes for a nice, relaxing dip in the springs.

A number of famous films and TV shows have been filmed in Bath, the most notable perhaps being the hugely popular TV show Inspector Morse, but other huge productions, including Les Miserables (2003) and The Duchess (2007) have been filmed in the city.