Gang of Suspects Named in Kidnap Case

by Ruth Downie

STOLEN: VILBIA

HELP OF GODDESS SUMMONED

GUILTY PARTY THREATENED WITH BECOMING LIQUID AS WATER

The loss of Vilbia is the most famous cold case that’s come down to us from the Romano-British town of Aquae Sulis (modern Bath). The aggrieved party – whose name we don’t know – called up the goddess Sulis Minerva’s help by writing the suspects’ names on a thin sheet of lead, rolling it up and throwing it in the pool above her sacred hot spring. It wasn’t alone: well over a hundred other curses have been found buried in the silt and others may be hidden there still.

Most of the spidery letters on the scraps of lead are the work of victims asking Sulis Minerva to avenge a crime. Some name the suspects. Some don’t say what they did: presumably the goddess knew what Britivenda and Venibelia had been up to and could punish them accordingly.

Often, though, the victim had no idea who had wronged them. The curse on the modern reproduction below translates as “the name of the culprit who stole my bracelet…” There’s a space left, but no name in it.

When no likely evildoer could be identified, the aggrieved party often reminded the goddess to suspect everyone, “whether man or woman, slave or free.” Children could be in the frame too -“whether boy or girl” - and once, “whether pagan or Christian”.

Some victims offered Sulis Minerva a share of the stolen goods if they were recovered – a sort of ‘no win, no fee’ deal, with the suggestion that the hot property could be handed in anonymously at the temple.

A few of the lead sheets are blank. Others bear rows of squiggles, perhaps put there by people who knew what writing looked like but couldn’t actually do it. All but two seem to have been in different handwriting: some educated, some very clearly not. Writing backwards might have made the curse more powerful: it certainly made for more spelling mistakes. But no matter what was being written, the sight of a stylus waking the dull surface of the lead into a gleaming message for the goddess might have frightened the guilty party into repentance.

If the culprit didn’t co-operate, though, bad things lay in store. Docimedis, whose gloves had gone missing, demanded that the thief should lose his minds [sic] and his eyes. Anyone even remotely involved in the theft of Basilia’s silver ring was to be accursed in blood, eyes and every limb, or even have all his or her intestines eaten away.

Sometimes the thief’s whole family was cursed. And sometimes the curses were subtle enough to work on the conscience. Whoever stole Docilianus’s cloak was to be deprived of both sleep and children until the cloak was returned to the temple. Whether or not he [or she, slave or free] knew the exact wording of the curse, it’s not hard to imagine them lying awake in the night watches and wondering whether they would get a better night’s sleep tomorrow if they got up now and delivered the stolen goods to Sulis Minerva under cover of darkness.

Bath isn’t alone in having a fine collection of curses: they turn up all over the Roman empire. There are attempts to silence witnesses, to sabotage racehorses, and to crush business competitors and love rivals. Most of the Bath curses, though, seem to be about thefts from the bath-house, although one poor chap had his house burgled. The crimes must have been very annoying for the victims, but as a writer looking to set a murder mystery in Aquae Sulis, I have to say there wasn’t as much instant plot in them as I’d hoped.

Even the apparent kidnap of Vilbia might have been less dramatic than it seems. Roger Tomlin, the modern translator, points out that the word has never been found anywhere else. The stolen “vilbia” might simply be an inanimate object with a name that none of us now understands. But while Vilbia doesn’t provide a ready-made plot and cast of characters, the curses as a whole give a lively insight into a busy town and the everyday struggles of its people to thrive and survive. And perhaps of the wider divisions between them.

We know that Roman citizens lived in the town (some of their tombstones have turned up, proudly announcing the three-part names that show social superiority), but none of the curses has a citizen’s name on it. All the complainants and culprits seem to be either lower-class Latin-speakers or native Britons. That might be because, as Pliny put it, the Britons were enthusiastic practitioners of magic while all good Romans ought to look down their noses at it (yes, I am paraphrasing wildly here). It might also be because the poorer you were, the less chance you had of owning a slave who would guard your kit while you were bathing.

Even if you knew who’d done it, in the absence of a police force there wasn’t much you could do unless you had powerful friends or plenty of cash. At a guess, Arminia had neither. She knew exactly who’d made off with her two silver coins – it was Verecundinus, son of Terentius - but getting them back had to be left to the goddess. 

Did Verecundinus pay up? Or did he suffer the punishment of being unable to sit, lie down, walk or sleep? We don’t know. For us, at least, none of these cold cases is resolved. But people believed in the curses enough to carry on throwing them into the spring for over two hundred years. There might have been no police officers to investigate crime, but even while you slept, that lump of lead hidden under the steaming surface of Sulis Minerva’s waters could be working its revenge on your enemies. And that must have felt good.

Roger Tomlin’s work on the Aquae Sulis curses - from which much of this information is drawn - can be found in The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, Vol 2: The Finds from the Sacred Spring – Barry Cunliffe et al – OUCA Monograph no 16, 1988

Read more about the site at https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/

Ruth writes a series of crime novels featuring Roman army medic Ruso and his British partner, Tilla. The latest is MEMENTO MORI, set in Aquae Sulis.

A Roman Query... by Lynne Benton

There is one problem peculiar to writers of historical fiction, especially ancient historical fiction, and that is the fact that nobody has first-hand knowledge of all the tiny details we might need to know.  Of course we can look things up on the internet and consult reference books, and we can ask people who have thoroughly studied the period we’re writing about, but they don’t necessarily know the precise thing we need.  When I’ve written fiction set in the present I’ve been able to contact experts who could tell me how to fly a hot air balloon, and how long goats lived, but now I need to know something I’ve not been able to find online or in any of the reference books I've consulted.  So I’m hoping that someone who reads this blog will have the answer I need before I can get any further with my new book.

I am currently writing a trilogy set in Roman Britain for Middle Grade (roughly 8 – 11 year-olds) called "The Britannia Mysteries".  The first book, “The Centurion’s Son”, came out last summer.  Set in the year 312 AD in present-day Caerleon, then called Isca, in South Wales, it is the story of two children, Felix (the eponymous centurion’s son) and his friend Catrin (a Silurian slave girl with second sight) who find themselves having to face dangerous challenges when Felix’s father disappears.  Having visited Caerleon several times I took care  to recreate the place as it might have been as accurately as I could, and I knew that the Second Augustan Legion really was stationed there, but the story is entirely fictional.  As ever my intention was to make History exciting for children. 

The second book, “Danger at Hadrian’s Wall”, is set one year later, in 313 AD and follows the same children with further adventures.  (No prizes for guessing where this one is set!)  Again Felix and Catrin face unexpected challenges during their visit to the Northern Frontier, this time to their friendship as well as to their lives.  And inevitably they also come up against great danger.  This is my latest book, which has just been published.

However, it is with the third and final one, which I am currently writing, that I have a problem.  This book is set in Bath, then called Aquae Sulis, where I live, and is set one year later again, in 314 AD.  So far, so good – I can go and see the Roman Baths for myself and ask the knowledgeable guides questions, (though as I have discovered they may not know all the answers to my very specific queries), but there is one thing nobody seems able to tell me: how did mothers transport their babies from A to B in those days?  The baby in my story is about 6 months old, so rather too big to carry around all the time, but although one website states that “Prior to the creation of the stroller, babies were carried in slings, baskets, front & back packs. The origins of baby wearing go as far back as ancient Egypt, during the time of the pharaohs.”  However, it goes on that “The first official recording of baby wearing appeared in 1306 when Giotto depicted Mary carrying baby Jesus in a sling.”  But if that was the first official recording, and it wasn't until 1306, did Giotto know for sure that was how she carried the baby?  I'm sure he did his research, but I don't know how much information was around in those days.  Or was it artistic licence? 

Maybe Roman mothers also carried their babies round in slings, or strapped to their fronts or backs.  Or maybe they carried them in baskets – but in that case, did the baskets have handles for ease of carrying, or is that a modern invention?  Prams, I discovered, weren’t invented until the early 18^th century, and cots/cribs/bassinets not until even later.  (Apparently until then babies slept in the same bed as their mothers.  That isn’t really pertinent to the story, but once I began researching I wanted to find out!)  Or maybe Roman mothers simply handed the baby over to a slave and told the slave to carry it, regardless of the weight of a growing infant. 

It may be a small detail, and it may not be crucial to the overall plot, but I do like to be able to see something in my head before I can write about it.  So if anyone knows, I’d be really grateful for the information. 

Thank you.

Lynne Benton

See my website: www.lynnebenton.com

History versus Modern Development: The City of Bath

by Marie-Louise Jensen

I live in an historic city which makes every trip into town a visit to a byegone era. It is a privilege and a pleasure for me and for many of the thousands who live here and the numerous visitors who pass through.

By MichaelMaggs (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The difficulty of balancing the every day, modern needs of a vibrant, thriving city with this historic beauty is an ongoing issue, of course. Traffic, roads, schools, housing, office space; all are constant concerns and conflict with preserving the valuable heritage we have been entrusted with. 

Bath is one of the few cities in the world to have Unesco World Heritage status. And it has been proven that cities can lose this. Dresden, which went ahead with a modern motorway bridge development too close to the city centre, did so. 

The new shopping centre that was opened in Southgate, Bath, in 2009 was aruguably an improvement on the hideous 1960s monstrosity it replaced. But it fails to do one thing that the old shopping centre maintained - the buildings are too tall and visitors can no longer see out over the hills around the city from the centre of the development - something that has always been a feature of the city. 

Now the new Riverside development of thousands of flats (many bought by overseas investors and standing empty, but that's a whole other issue) are threatening the status all over again. Tall, brash and modern, and very close to the Georgian city centre, they can be seen from every vantage point, a raw eyessore. There has been little space planned in to plant cover which would soften the appearance over time. 

Now the city council want to build a Park and Ride to the east of the city, concreting over beautiful green belt, another site that will be very visible from many vantage points; a gleaming sea of cars by day and empty tarmac by night.

Bathampton Meadows

I know a balance needs to be struck, and proponents of development say we can't live in a museum. But my inclination is to say, why not? There are other modern cities you can choose to live in if you want that. I think we are risking our beautiful city and its outstanding reminders of its past. The city in which I set my novel The Girl in the Mask, was built over and adapted by the Georgians. Perhaps people felt even then it was being damaged. But what was built was high quality, was outstandingly beautiful and has endured. Somehow, I don't think the Park and Ride and the Riverside are going to be drawing tourists in 200 years time. 

Bath's Secret Leper Hospital by Katherine Webb

I've recently been finding out as much as I can about the Holloway and Beechen Cliff areas of Southern Bath, to use as a setting in my next novel. It's a fascinating part of the city, though much altered by two catastrophes in its recent history. Firstly the Baedeker raids of the Second World War, which I wrote about in a previous blog post. Holloway and other areas in the south of Bath were badly damaged - many houses sat in ruins for decades after the war, and were never rebuilt. And then, in the mid 1960s, came the aggressive redevelopment that has become known as the 'Sack of Bath'. By this time, many of the C17th, C18th and C19th cottages in the area, which had long housed poorer members of Bath's society - small artisans and the working classes - had fallen into disrepair and been categorised as slum dwellings. They were torn down, wholesale, to make way for road improvements and a raft of 'modern' (ugly), cheaply built houses and flats.

The demolition of Victorian artisan housing at the foot of Beechen Cliff in 1966

The redevelopment was so brutal - and deemed by many as so unnecessary - that it actually led to new, tighter development laws. There are a great many photographs of what was lost, and what was built in its place, available to view (but sadly not to reproduce here) on the bathintime.co.uk website - just search for Holloway. So, not much remains of the district as it would have looked at the time I am setting my book - in 1919, and in 1942 in the aftermath of the bombing raids. But there are still little bits of architectural magic here and there, and one that has particularly caught my eye is Number 90, Holloway; aka Magdalen Cottage; aka the old leper hospital.

S & N Buck's 1734 drawing looking west over Bath. Beechen Cliff is the high wooded hill on the left; Holloway the steeply descending housing going towards the bridge

Holloway, as it turns out, is a truly ancient bit of road. It was originally built by the Romans as part of the Fosse Way that linked Lincoln to Exeter via Bath, but it's likely that they built along an existing, far older trackway. There's some dispute as to whether the name 'Holloway', which is found all over the UK, means 'holy way', ie leading to a holy site of some kind; or merely 'hollow way' as in a sunken road. Both definitions fit for Bath's Holloway, since not only did it lead to the Roman shrine to the goddess Sulis, and later to a Christian abbey and city associated with St Dunstan, popular with medieval pilgrims, but it is also cut into the steep slope of the hill.

An early C19th map of Bath, showing Holloway curving around Beechen Cliff towards the city

At the bottom end of Holloway, about five hundred metres beyond the remnants of the medieval city walls, sits Magdalen Chapel; and a few metres further down the hill sits No. 90 Holloway: a small, plain Georgian cottage bearing a tantalising stone stating: 'This hospital was rebuilt in 1761 AD.' The cottage's origins, however, like the chapel's, are medieval. Sitting a safe distance outside the city walls, this was Bath's first leper hospital. Mercifully, given that it was in a poor state of repair by the 1960s, it was saved from demolition by belonging (and still belonging) to the St John's Hospital Foundation, who still do excellent work in Bath providing housing and resources for vulnerable people.

The east end of Magdalen Chapel on the left; the small, detached cottage further down the hill is No. 90

In the 1170s, a monk suffering from leprosy travelled from Reading to Bath in search of a cure - Bath's thermal spring waters had been reputed to have healing powers since Roman times. It is likely that this monk, thought to have been named Elias, would have stayed at Magdalen Cottage. The chapel and cottage had been gifted to Bishop John of Tours by one Walter Hussey, upon the foundation of Bishop John's cathedral priory in Bath in 1100. Bishop John was also a physician, and it seems likely that it was he who first decided to use the cottage as a hospital for lepers. Beechen Cliff has many natural springs, so the cottage would have had its own supply of clean drinking water.

The name 'hospital' here is possibly misleading. There was no cure for leprosy. Upon admission to a Lazar House, as they were known, sufferers had to make a will and cut all ties with the world. It was a form of living death, so 'hospital' is meant more in the sense of 'hospitality' -  a place to stay - than as we now interpret the word, as a place of treatment and healing. St Mary Magdalen Hospital gets a mention in the 1212 will of the Bishop of Lincoln, and the 'Master and Brethren' were then granted royal protection in 1256. As you can see in the photograph below, the cottage is tiny. Behind it there is a small yard, and then the land drops away steeply again, towards the river. It is unlikely that, when rebuilt in the C15th and then again in 1761, it was built any smaller than the original footprint. So, even sleeping several to a room, it could not have housed many unfortunate residents at a time, and in very cramped conditions. And, of course, no amount of bathing in Bath's waters would have effected a cure for the disease.

The old leper hospital. I'm no architectural historian, but it looks to me as though parts of the older structure are visible at the feet of the rebuilt C18th walls

By the late medieval period, leprosy had become a far rarer condition in England. However, such was the reputation of Bath's waters, there are records of lepers still visiting to bathe far later than this - into the C16th. The fortunes of the hospital rose and fell over the years. By 1486 it had fallen into a desperate state, and housed only two or three impoverished people. It was restored by Prior John Cantlow in 1491, after being described by Pope Innocent VIII as 'a ruinous hospital'; declined again and was restored, again, thanks to a bequest, in 1560. However, soon after this, in the 1570s, a new hospital for lepers was built inside the city walls, near the baths, with its own separate bathing pool, and it is likely that Magdalen Hospital began another period of decline. By the time it was rebuilt in 1761, it was being used as a refuge for the mentally handicapped; which is a very sad thought.

Magdalen Chapel, with the hospital visible just down the hill, in a drawing from 1829

By the time the cottage was listed Grade II in 1950, the interior was described as being in a very poor state, with no original features remaining. In 1954 a timber lean-to kitchen was added to the rear of the property, and it may have been at this time that the cottage was used as a private dwelling for the first time. It was extended and updated in the 1960s, again in 1997, and most recently in 2011-12. It is now let out to private tenants by the St John's Foundation. It is, not unexpectedly, reputed to be haunted, with a variety of ghost stories relating to its history - a reputation I plan to make the most of in my novel! It's a fascinating little building, in an interesting part of the city, and its history gives an intriguing snapshot of the history of Bath before and after its famous Georgian period.

A Lesser-Known Blitz by Katherine Webb

In May last year a friend of mine, and several hundred of her neighbours, were evacuated from their homes in the northern streets of Bath. The reason: the discovery of a five-hundred pound unexploded bomb beneath the playground of a school on Lansdown Road, leftover from World War II. A three-hundred metre exclusion was put in place at once, as the bomb disposal team sought to disable it. Eventually, they managed to move it safely to the Torr Works quarry, where it was blown up, 74 years after it had been dropped.

So, people who live near Bath certainly know that the city was bombed in the war, and I'd known it for some time - it was bombed as part of the Baedeker raids, so called, after the famous travel guides, because the targets were chosen for their cultural importance and beauty, rather than because of any military or strategic significance. Lately, I've been researching the Bath Blitz in more detail, for my next book, and it turns out I'd had no idea of the scale of the bombing.

Bomb-damaged Georgian houses in Bath

Across two weekend nights, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 1942, one hundred and fifty or so German bombers flew over Bath in three bombing raids, two the first night and one the second night. Hundreds of high explosives of various sizes, and incendiaries designed to start devastating fires, were dropped; the exact number will never be known - it is known that many fell into the River Avon, and were swallowed by the mud. One has to assume that they're still down there... The Baedeker Raids, which included attacks on Canterbury, Norwich, York and Exeter, were in revenge for RAF attacks on Rostock, the location of important German factories and shipyards. As well as dropping bombs and incendiaries, some planes dive-bombed to as low as fifty feet, and raked the streets with machine gun fire. The damage can still be seen today - notably in the walls of the old labour exchange on James Street:

Bullet and shrapnel damage in the walls of the old labour exchange

The idea of setting a book in the Bath blitz has been niggling the back of my mind for a long time, and as luck would have it I stumbled across this pamphlet a few years ago, at an antiquarian book fair in Bath:

Produced by the Bath & Wilts Chronicle and Herald later on in 1942, this booklet gives a great overview of the raids, and their effect on the city. It's also a wonderful snapshot of the language and attitude of the press at the time:

'Dr Goebbels may now weep his slimy crocodile tears over "the destruction of historical and art treasures in Luebeck, Bath and Canterbury... Did not Goebbels once boast, "When I hear the word culture, I push back the catch of my revolver"? 

The author, Mr Claude Wimhurst, goes on to describe the grit and spirit of the city, and, in a fine example of stiff upper lip, to declare that the purpose of the booklet is not to 'harrow feelings',  but to 'steel the hearts' of those fighting the good fight, and to serve as a warning to future generations of the horrors and modern warfare. A timely reminder, likely to be ignored, in these days of turbulent global politics. Nevertheless, the history of the raids is harrowing. Of course it is. Four hundred people lost their lives, over a thousand more were injured, and many thousands lost their homes. And whilst this is small number compared to the 32,000 or so souls who lost their lives in London, the human stories that come from those two terrible nights in Bath are every bit as heart-breaking.

Some of the dead from the first night's attacks were laid out in a temporary mortuary in the crypt of St James's church, only for the church to be hit itself on the second night, and badly burnt. In putting out the flames, the fire service inadvertently destroyed all the identification papers on the dead bodies, so that nobody knew who they were, and many had to be interred anonymously. On May 1st, 247 people were laid to rest in a mass grave.

Bath Blitz victims are laid to rest on May 1st, 1942

There are devastating personal histories, described in the Bath Chronicle booklet and in the statistics listed on the excellent Bath Blitz memorial website, bathblitz.org. At no. 3, Howells Court, William and Beatrice Rattray were killed along with their seven children: Christine, 7; Donald, 5; George, 13; Joan, 8; Pamela, 10; Shirley, 2; and William, aged 10. What an unimaginable scene. Sergeant Clifford Ford, a serving soldier, returned on leave to find that his wife, Emily, and their six children had all perished at no. 7, New King Street. A baby girl was found in the wreckage of one house, and taken to Bristol Infirmary, where she died. Of her, the Chronicle records:

'Who she was no one knows. All that can be said about this unknown child victim is contained in the following terse official description which has been preserved: "Age, about two years; hair, fair; eyes, blue-grey; division between top row of teeth; no other distinguishing features." '

One can only assume that whoever was looking after the little girl that night was also killed, and never identified. What a sad end to a tragically short life.

It's easy to spot the gaps in Bath's architecture where Georgian splendour gives way to some 1960s built block of flats or carpark. Often, buildings were not rebuilt until much later, and there is still a ruddy great bomb crater in the lawned centre of The Circus. The famous Assembly Rooms, which had been visited and written about by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, were badly damaged by an incendiary. They had only re-opened in 1938 after a £50,000 program of refurbishment, and the Chronicle laments that they probably can't or won't be rebuilt again. They were, however, and are now back to their original glory:

The tea room in Bath Assembly Rooms today

The same room shortly after the blitz

Other buildings were beyond saving. One of the oldest mansions in Bath, the Abbey Church House in Sion Hill, was destroyed. Mainly Tudor, the building had foundations dating back to 1138, when a leper hospital stood on the site. Another medieval leper hospital, attached to the Mary Magdalene Chapel on Holloway, was also damaged. Today, it's easy to see, on a walking tour of the city, where the gap left by a bombed-out building has been filled with something more recent - with varying degrees of architectural grace. It's as fascinating to me as peering behind the Georgian facades and finding the medieval, Tudor and Stuart origins of many of Bath's buildings.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to visit, and stood high on Beechen Cliff, in the south of the city, to have a virtual birds' eye view of the damage that had been done. There are familiar stories of making do, of mucking in and not being dismayed. I have always wondered how far that was genuinely the case, or how far merely a statement of intent perpetuated by the media. It must have been utterly terrifying, and the effects of that terror long-reaching in the hearts and minds of the survivors. But the city did mend itself. On April 25th, 2008, Willi Schludecker, then aged 87, came to Bath to lay a wreath during the annual memorial service to the Bath raids. Willi, who died in 2010, was one of the German pilots who'd flown on the raids.

Willi Schludecker, who flew more than 120 sorties for the Luftwaffe during WWII, in Bath in 2008

A Day Trip to Bath by Katherine Webb

I was recently blindsided somewhat by a journalist who'd come over to the UK from Germany to interview me, I thought, about my latest release over there. It turned out that she was after a travel piece on Bath instead, and after floundering for a moment when she asked me to close me eyes and tell her 'What is Bath?', I was able to talk at length about this wonderful historic city, so full of its own character (and, my sister would remark, also full of itself).

I live about eight miles outside of Bath, in the countryside, but proximity to Bath was definitely a pull factor when moving to the area. And, within weeks of moving down here, I'd started a novel set in Bath in 1820 (The Misbegotten). I couldn't seem to help it - the atmosphere of all things Georgian and Regency was too powerful! So this month I thought I'd blog about Bath and some of its famous faces, and recommend it to anybody wanting a day trip this summer to a place that wears its history on its sleeve.

Well, I kind of have to start with this lady. Although Jane Austen only lived in Bath for a few years, she remains firmly associated with the place. Bath features as the setting of 'Persuasion', and gets a mention in other Austen books as well, and there's a Jane Austen museum and festival for fans here. It's just as interesting to visit The Assembly Rooms, however, at which Austen is known to have attended functions. Designed in 1769 by John Wood the Younger, the Assembly Rooms are now owned by the National Trust and you can go and have a wander around the grand tearoom, the octagon room where the men would have played cards, and the ballroom with its fantastic chandeliers - now electric, but in Austen's day holding hundreds of candles. The heat rising from all the thronging, dancing bodies below was often so great that the candles melted, and dribbled hot wax onto the party-goers. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/bath-assembly-rooms

John Wood the Younger (1728-1782), and his father John Wood the Elder (1704-1754), were the architects who had the most influence on the building of Bath in the Georgian era. Between them the pair designed the most iconic of Bath's seven elegant crescents - The Royal Crescent - as well as The Circus, Queen Square, Gay Street, The Royal Mineral Water Hospital and Prior Park, private residence of Ralph Allen, about whom more shortly, and much more. The Woods' designs pioneered Bath's neo-classical, Palladian grandeur, still so much in evidence today. When it was built in 1775, The Royal Crescent was on the edge of the city, with no other buildings in front of it to spoil the view for the residents. The same cannot be said today, but I can report that Barton Fields, as shown above, have indeed never been built on.

The newly completed Circus in the late 1700s

Another person strongly linked to Bath's Georgian soul is Richard 'Beau' Nash (1674-1761), Master of Ceremonies from 1704 onwards. This was an unofficial title, but it put Beau Nash into a position of tremendous social influence, and helped make Bath the height of fashion in its heyday in the early 1700s. An early career in the army and then as a barrister clearly didn't suit the fun-loving Beau Nash, who had a gambling problem and lived with a string of mistresses. As MC of Bath, he would meet new arrivals, decide who was 'in' and who was not, broker marriages, arrange balls, keep a check on the worst gamblers, and accompany lone women to dances. He is also credited with encouraging a break down in the strict social boundaries between the upper and middle classes in Bath, although this might have backfired on him slightly as Bath fell out of fashion towards the end of the century, came to be seen as vulgar and old hat, the haunt of spinsters and invalids, and to be passed over by fashionistas in favour of Lyme Regis and other seaside resorts.

One more Georgian notable for you: Ralph Allen (1693-1764). Allen started out as a clerk in the Post Office at a young age, and by the age of 19, in 1712, became the postmaster of Bath. With a series of reforms and innovations, he increased the office's profits and reach to such an extent that he became a wealthy man. He bought up stone quarries in the local area, recognising the growing demand for the honey-coloured Bath stone in bringing the Woods' designs to life, and thus became a very wealthy man indeed. On a hill to the south east of Bath sits the Sham Castle, an elaborate folly built to give Allen something to look at from his townhouse in the city.

In 1742, Ralph Allen hired John Wood the Younger to build Prior Park, a Palladian mansion to the south of Bath, which he later moved in to. It is in a truly wonderful setting, with long reaching views of the city and a quintessential C18th garden, designed with the help of Capability Brown, which has one of only four Palladian bridges of its kind in the world. The house itself now houses a school, but the National Trust has the gardens, and they're lovely to visit. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/prior-park-landscape-garden

The bridge has lots of interesting old graffiti, if you like that kind of thing (which I do) - showing that whilst standards of handwriting have declined over the years, standards of behaviour are much the same as they ever were!

There are so many Georgian wonders in Bath - don't miss the Florentine Pulteney Bridge, either, completed in 1774. Palladian again, this time designed by Robert Adam, the bridge has shops on along either side of its span across the River Avon - but its history goes back a lot further than that. The reason anybody came here in the first place was for the hot water springs, first settled by the Romans who named the city Aquae Sulis - meaning the waters of Sulis. Sulis was the native British goddess to whom the locals had built a shrine on the site. Britain's only hot water thermal springs, the waters were soon enclosed within a huge Roman bath and temple complex, now wonderfully excavated and fascinating to visit (incidentally, you can bathe in the hot spring water yourself, at nearby Thermae Spa - the rooftop pool has wonderful views of the city. You can drink it too, just like a Georgian invalid, in the Roman Baths visitor centre, although I don't think there's much to be gained by it - very eggy.).

The Roman Bath complex

Thanks to Georgian fashion and bombing in WWII, the medieval city of Bath is harder to spot. The Abbey, now in a late C15th form, sits on top of two older churches, and is very beautiful inside - fan vaulting galore. Sally Lunn's Historic Eating House is most famous for being the only place to get a Bath Bun - like a brioche, and very tasty - but for me the real treat in going there is to go down into the basement museum, which recreates kitchens of the past, and where you can see open excavations going down through the centuries, proving that there has been a house on that spot for over a thousand years. The medieval city walls and gates have sadly gone, but many houses in the area to the south of and immediately around the abbey are in fact medieval buildings, hunkered down behind tacked-on Georgian fronts.

I've got this far and not mentioned the Kennet and Avon canal, or Sydney Gardens, or William Herschel, or the Pump Rooms, or any one of a hundred other historical things to see in Bath. It is truly a unique city with a remarkable history, and an absolute must-see for anybody interested in our Roman or Georgian history.

Life Patterns - Celia Rees

I will admit here, I am no quilter, although I know some of my fellow History Girls are and I'm sure we will number quilters among our followers.

Quilt, Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre, Lampeter

When I was in the Sixth Form there was a craze for quilting. In those days, Liberty's would send swatches of material to anyone who asked for them. I remember being entranced by the beauty of the Liberty patterns, the richness of the William Morris designs, but unlike some of my friends, I never actually made a quilt. One of my friends from those days still has the quilt she made. The Liberty pieces are mixed with humbler fabrics, bits of school shirt and summer dresses. When I see it, it takes me straight back to that time.

I might not have actually done any sewing, but quilts and quilting stayed with me. Like many writers, I'm often asked where my ideas come from. They are often just there in the ragbag of past enthusiasms and passing interests waiting to be plucked out and worked up into something. So it was with quilts and quilting. I've blogged about my visit to the American Museum, Bath and its connection to Witch Child  Witch Child at the American Museum, Bath - Celia Rees . On my original visit, I didn't go there to look at quilts. I went to see the quilts on display because they interested me anyway. If I hadn't had that interest, I might not have bothered and I would not have had the idea that allowed me to write Witch Child.

Stitch and Write American Museum, Bath

Though researching and writing Witch Child, I learnt a great deal about quilts and quilting. Quilts at the time Witch Child is set (17th Century) would have been all of a piece (as the one shown above), not patchwork, with which we are more familiar. There could, however, I reasoned, have been quilts made out of pieces of material. This was mostly because I wanted one in the book, but it made sense to me, woman sense. My mother, my grandmother, her mother before her kept scraps of material and made bed covers, cushion covers, by piecing them together, nothing would be wasted. That was relatively recently, how much more precious would cloth have been in 17th Century America?  The fact that there are none of these kinds of quilts from this period doesn't mean that they never existed. It just means that they were worn out with every day use, not precious enough to be preserved.  

These pieced quilts are my favourites. I can admire and appreciate the beauty and intricacy of patchwork quilt designs: Tumbling Dice, Log Cabin, Rose Wreath, String of Flags (even the names are wonderful); the striking originality of the Amish and Mennonite quilts; the ancient symbolism contained in recurring motifs of flowers, fruits, cups, the tree of life. Above all, I can celebrate and admire the women's work, the artistic creativity expressed through the designs. Even so, the quilts I love best are those that are made from every day materials, from clothes that have been worn and worn again: shirts, waistcoats, even pyjamas. Stiff flannel softened by wear and washing to the smoothness of heavy silk, the colours faded, one pastel shade blending into another.

Jen Jones  “Early to Bed” Exhibition, Welsh Quilt Centre, Lampeter 

This example is from the 2014 "Early to Bed" Exhibition of Folk Art and “Make-do and Mend” in the work of the rural quilters of 19th century Wales at Jen Jones wonderful Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter, West Wales: http://www.jen-jones.com . Quilts like these provide not only a palimpsest of rural economy and thrift but a record of working people's lives.

Shirts provide many of the patches in these kinds of quilts. The shirt is personal to the wearer, carrying his scent, retaining his shape.  In the past, to sew and launder a shirt was an act of love.

As I did the washing one day


Under the bridge at Aberteifi,


And a golden stick to drub it,


And my sweetheart's shirt beneath it--


A knight came by upon a charger,


Proud and swift and broad of shoulder,


And he asked if I would sell


The shirt of the lad that I loved well.

No, I said, I will not trade--


Not if a hundred pounds were paid;


Not if two hillsides I could keep


Full with wethers and white sheep;


Not if two fields full of oxen


Under yoke were in the bargain;


Not if the herbs of all Llanddewi,


Trodden and pressed, were offered to me--


Not for the likes of that,

I'd sell 
the shirt of the lad that I love well.....

The Shirt of a Lad - Anonymous (tr. Tony Conran)

Artist and friend Julia Griffiths-Jones chose this poem to include in her body of work, Unwinding the Thread, translating words into the images that might be embroidered on such a shirt,  re-producing the designs in aluminium wire, pewter and enamelled copper wire.

Shirt of a Lad - Julia Griffiths-Jones

In the folk song, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, the making of a shirt without no seams nor needlework is one of the true love tasks impossible to achieve. So shirts gain significance, personal and sentimental. Shirts are so much a part of what a person is, or was. Another friend, Barbara Crowther, describes in a Guardian article how she has found a way to use the shirts left by her husband, Dick, who died suddenly and tragically three years ago. Dick was a man who loved his shirts, especially striped shirts, stripes of all kinds and colours: thick, thin, bright, dark and pastel.  Instead of leaving his shirts shut away in the dark, in a suitcase in the attic, Barbara brought them out into the light again and took them to her friend Louise Charters, an upholsterer and soft furnisher, who has turned them into something beautiful for Dick's daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, to remember their father by. 

Barbara Crowther and her daughter, Georgia Leith
David Sillitoe for the Guardian

David Sillitoe for the Guardian

This blog seems to have turned into a bit of a patchwork itself. I'll finish with an odd piece of serendipity. The day after I wrote  this blog, I went to Modern Art Oxford to see an exhibition: Love is Enough, William Morris and Andy Warhol. A young woman artist, Diana Taylor, had just finished a textile workshop. 

Now here's the odd thing - my maiden name was Taylor and the beautiful hangings filling the foyer were made, in part at least, from William Morris designs. 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

The Goddess Sulis Minerva

by Marie-Louise Jensen

Living in Bath as I do, I've trailed around the Roman Baths dozens of times with and without visitors. What is fascinating is that no matter how many times I visit, I always learn something new. 

The Great Bath as it looks today: Wikipedia

Before Christmas, I went for a wander around in order to be inspired for a story for 7-8 year olds. I hardly dare mention I'm writing a Roman story with resident History Girls' expert Caroline Lawrence on the blog! But I consider the Roman Baths at Bath practically home, so that will serve as my excuse to dip my toe in Roman waters. 

On my last trip, they had a new innovation at the baths: actors dressed in Roman costumes who could tell you 'their' story. I had a long chat with the slave girl, maid to a grand Roman lady. I learned that the only way she had of making money was to grow and sell her hair. I also learned lots of fascinating information about Roman cosmetics and the fact that Romans disliked body hair. 

As I'm in the process of writing the e-book now, I'm particularly interested in the goddess of the baths, Sulis Minerva. She was an amalgamation of the local Celtic deity Sul, goddess of healing and sacred waters, and the Roman deity Minerva, goddess of wisdom. The largest Roman baths in Britain, built to make use of our only hot springs, are dedicated to her. The city was named Aquae Sulis in her honour.

Sulis Minerva: image courtesy of Wikipedia

There was a huge temple, which only the priests could enter, next to the baths complex, but the altar was outdoors in the temple precinct. Here sacrifices of food or animals were made by the priests.

But the public had their own way of communicating with the goddess. It was believed that the Sacred Spring was the point at which the human world touched the world of the deity and that here communication could take place. Prayers, wishes and above all curses were scratched onto thin sheets of lead or pewter and thrown into the spring. They seem to have been accompanied by a gift thrown into the spring: a wealth of jewellery and coins from the era have been recovered along with the prayers. 

I love the idea that the deity could intervene in human affairs through the spring and so have had my young characters ask Sulis Minerva to bring down a plague of carbuncles upon a thief. That should serve him or her right. Let's just hope the goddess is listening. 

Bath in 1713

by Marie-Louise Jensen

During the Bath Literature festival a couple of months ago, I bought a ticket for a guided walk with the theme 'Bath in 1713'. As this is just two years before my book 'The Girl in the Mask' is set, I was really curious to see how much the walk would add to my knowledge of Bath at that time and how much I would already know - and would I discover any errors?
What did I already know? Lots! That the season ran April to September, that sedan chairs were used instead of horses and carriages in the narrow streets and the locations of many of the old buildings such as the original assembly rooms, city walls and Guildhall.
What did I learn? Amazingly I learned that one of the four city gates still survives! The East gate opened onto the river Avon and had a wharf for loading and unloading goods and passengers. It is still there down below the old Empire Hotel (now an appartment and restaurant complex) beside the Abbey. I had no idea it was there (locked behind iron gates) even though I've been to the other end of it when canoeing on the river.
I learned to distinguish the gabled fronts of the pre-Georgian houses from the parapet, flat fronted Georgian buildings - and even to spot where the old style had been converted to the new to keep up with the fashions. I learned there is one surviving Tudor house front hidden away in Shire's Yard. It was fascinating.
And yes, I discovered I had made one mistake. Trim Theatre was not in Trim Street, as I had understood. It was around the corner in Upper Borough Walls. Bother!

Transport in Georgian Bath: The Sedan Chair





Sedan Chair

 

 

by Marie-Louise Jensen

 

 

When I first began planning a story set in Georgian Bath, I assumed that horses and carriages were the normal mode of transport within the city. I was completely wrong.

 

There were several good reasons why. Firstly, the city of Bath in the early days of the reign of George I was really tiny. Just a handful of streets, squares and alleys. There was no way it would have been worth harnessing horses to the carriage for the short journey to the hot baths or the assembly rooms. Space was also at a premium in a city still confined by its medieval walls. The city was full to bursting with visitors during the season and there never would have been space for stabling for everyone as well.

The streets and alleys of Bath were both narrow and steep and filled with piles of refuse besides, which would have made them impassable to horses and carriages.

The city expanded greatly through the 18th century, spilling out over its original city walls into the green space around. The new streets were wider, grander and cleaner but they were even steeper than before as the city climbed into the surrounding hills. Sedan chairs continued to be used, even once they had fallen into disuse in London. Some of the grander new houses even had huge curved porches incorporated into their design to allow the chair to be carried right into the house and turned around there, so that the wealthy passengers did not need to walk out into the street to climb in. In their defence, it does rain A LOT in Bath.

 

The chairmen in Bath were notorious. They ran through the streets with scant attention to hapless pedestrians who were expected to keep out of their way. Apparently they did call out a warning, such as 'Have care!' or 'By your leave!' though they gave way to no one. At night they were obliged to either carry a lamp or be accompanied by a link boy with lighted flambeau, but accidents happened nonetheless; pedestrians were run down, passengers were spilled, chairs were smashed.

Chairmen jostled one another in their eagerness to collect passengers and fights regularly broke out between rival chairmen. They terrified ladies with their coarse language and swearing (!),  and they were known for locking their passengers into their chair and refusing to let them out until whatever exorbitant fare they chose to demand had been paid. If the passenger was stubborn, they would open the roof and let the rain in on them. (The roofs could be opened to allow passengers to wear tall hats, feathers or elaborate hairstyles undamaged, though presumably only on dry days).

Beau Nash fought an ongoing battle with the sedan chairman who preyed on visitors to the city and was responsible for a licence being introduced. After that, each chair bore a number and could be reported for infringing the rules.

Eventually the sedan chair was replaced by the wheeled Bath Chair. Our present taxi system still bears the same numbered system of licences that were introduced for the sedan chairs all those years ago.