United Kingdom trip (Part 3)- City of Bath

City of Bath- UNESCO World heritage site

“Do you want know about Roman history in England?” Asked my friend. “Yes, I do” was my answer. So, we included City of Bath in our itinerary. After visiting Salisbury we headed toward City of Bath. Again we faced problem with parking the car. We entered Bath Cricket Club. We saw plenty of parking. We were so overjoyed that we didn’t notice, that , that was a private parking space. That means only the club members can park cars there. 

Bath cricket club ground

Getting parking outside was a tough. On the top of that, it was a Saturday, people went out like us. Our friend directly went to the club house , and asked for parking permission. They allowed us, and we went to visit the ancient Roman Bath in the heart of the city. The city was built around the ruin of the Roman Bath, and named after it. 

Bath Abbey

When we reached there it was around five o’clock in the evening. But due to long day in summer it felt like in the middle of the day with bright sunshine. So, there was no need to worry about going back home. Moreover, it was Saturday, another lazy day was in hand. 

We started walking on the bridge over  the  Bath River with beautiful similar structured buildings on both sides. We could see the cricket tournament was going on at Bath cricket club. Anyway, we reached the center of the Bath City, in front the Bath Abbey. What a view!! What a magnificent structure! With two enormous tall spire on the both sides and numerous small spires, the building was standing tall with its full glory, showing the modern world, that how could they think about architecture and art together. How could they create such building with so many minute details from top to bottom?  The stained glass windows at the front of the hall added extra glory to the building. 

The structure of Bath might be like this

Then we entered the Historic site of 4th Century A.D. Roman Bath, which was a well preserved site of Roman Public bathing. The actual Roman bath was exactly one level below the modern City of Bath. It was one of gem of the Roman civilization in Britain. The bath system was a detailed grand activity to the Romans. So, after invading , and capturing southwest part of Britain they created the bath , because of hot spring. To them bath was worship. They used different kind of oil for their bath. The bath was dedicated to Auqa Salis who was connected to Minarva, Roman goddess of wisdom.

The main pool

 
First we entered at the main hot spring of the Roman Bath. It was huge pool compared to that era, with many of the statues of god and goddess surround the pool. There were several pools , they were used for different reason. The Romans believed in different healing properties of different bath. Anyway, we visited seven or eight pools inside the site. In one pool I saw stack of ancient bricks. Out of curiosity I read the board beside it,and found out that brick stacks were made to create a hollow space in the bottom the pool, where charcoal were burned to heat up the pool. Like this many history were scattered inside the site. We saw even the bust the goddess Minarva made at that time. We didn’t have much time in our hand to see each and every site. Though, I visited , but I couldn’t remember all of the pools’ purpose. But in Roman culture those baths were used as a part of socialization, what I think. May be I’m wrong, after all, I’m not a Historian. I love to read history. After coming home I tried to dig out history about the Roman Bath. It is huge, it will take time to read and understand about it. Still I read little bit in Internet. 
But one questions always comes into mind, when Romans left England, what happened to the Bath? How it went one story below the modern city? How it went underground? How did it perish? Due to any war? I don’t know. If anyone know about it , please tell me. I just want to know the history .Was it demolished or it just ruined with time due to lack of care? What happened to it? How it lost its ancient glory. 

The few of remains which were found during excavation

I couldn’t find out my answer. But it was time to back. So we came out from the Bath complex to see the modern city. We roamed by the side of Bath River, then we headed toward Reading. 
After reaching Reading we saw the 900 years old ruin of the Abbey of Henry I. As it would be open in 2018, we couldn’t see it properly standing in the month of July of 2016. 

Beth river

City of Bath

It was time for dinner. We had pizza and went back home at 12:00 at night. Next day’s schedule was Oxford and Bibury village.