Bath Abbey

Bath Abbey, 1833.

One of the odd things about Austen's novels, letters and diaries is that she seemingly never mentions Bath Abbey, even though she must have walked past it many times, and perhaps even attended divine service there.
Visitors today don't see the Abbey as Jane would have known it; the building was re-modelled by George Manners in the 1830s, and restored in the 1860s and 1870s by that serial 'improver' of ancient churches, George Gilbert Scott.
The Abbey, also known as the church of St Peter and St Paul, may have been founded as early as 675; there's a
timeline here on the Abbey website. 

The Abbey in the 1890s. 

During Jane Austen's day, services were held daily at 11am; the tower had a peal of ten bells. In 1785 (when Jane was ten years old), several Sunday Schools were set up in Bath; one was attached to the Abbey Church. Within a few years, over 500 children attended the schools (they had to be recommended by a subscriber to be able to attend).

Lansdown Crescent, Bath

'Could it be Mr Elliot? They knew he was to dine in Lansdown Crescent. It was possible that he might stop in his way home, to ask them how he did'.  This mention of Lansdown Crescent in Persuasion is a testament to Mr Elliot's eligibility, as it was a very fashionable street.
The Historic and Local New Bath Guide (1802) describes the Crescent (at one time known as the Upper Crescent) as a 'grand and stately pile of buildings that seems to crown the city'.
Residents enjoyed picturesque views of the 'town sloping to the Avon; on the west, the valley winding towards Bristol, diversified by the hands of nature and art in the most elegant manner; hills swelling over hills, and vales intersecting vales, adorned with woods, lawns and gardens, display their several charms'.
In April 1805, after attending church, Jane Austen and her mother visited the Irvine family at 19 Lansdown Crescent to take tea with them.One of the Crescent's more famous residents (several years after Jane Austen's death) was William Beckford, the author of Vathek.
Image: The Album of Bath Views, Charles, Reynolds & Co., c.1890.

Jane Austen and Bath V: Walcot

St Swithin's Church tower.

Anne Elliot walks off with Mr Elliot.

Jane Austen fans will know that the novelist, like Persuasion's Anne Elliot, had a very strong 'disinclination for Bath', but the town held very fond memories for her parents.
That's probably why George Austen decided to retire there sometime towards the end of 1800. Over thirty years earlier, George and his wife Cassandra Leigh were married in the medieval church of St Swithin's Church, Walcot on 26 April 1764. 

Jane's aunt and uncle, the Leigh-Perrots, lived in Bath, too. And the town's genteel pleasures were just the ticket for a clergyman's retirement, with its libraries, shops, concerts - and therapeutic spa baths in case of illness.

 

St Swithin's Church.

George Austen's grave.

But despite the fame of the Bath waters, George was poorly during the last three years of his life. He died on 21 January 1805, and was buried in the crypt of St Swithin's; you can visit his gravestone in the churchyard.










All photos (c) Sue Wilkes.

Jane Austen and Bath IV: The Assembly Rooms

Assembly Rooms, Bath.

'Oh, who could ever be tired of Bath!’ gushed Northanger Abbey's Catherine Morland. There was plenty of entertainment for an impressionable young lady like Catherine in Austen's day. 

Balls were held twice weekly at the Upper and Lower Assembly Rooms in season; card games were played on the other nights of the week, except Sunday, when the rooms were opened for promenading.   

The Lower Rooms or Harrison’s Rooms dated back to 1708; they burnt down in about 1820. 

Harrison's Rooms plaque.

Chandeliers in the Assembly Rooms.

The Upper Rooms, also known as the New Assembly Rooms, were built in 1771 by John Wood. 

The Upper Rooms can still be seen today; they are home to the Fashion Museum.

Visitors to Bath also enjoyed going to the theatres, which were open in the evening after dinner, or they could listen to a concert in the Upper Rooms. In 1812 a ticket for all nine concerts at the Upper Rooms in the winter season cost 2 guineas.

Regency-era Gowns, Bath Fashion Museum.

In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland was introduced to Henry Tilney by the master of ceremonies of the Lower Rooms. Henry was ‘a most gentleman-like young man’ with a ‘pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if not quite handsome, was very near it. His address [manner] was good, and Catherine felt herself in good luck’.  

Photos © Sue Wilkes.

Jane Austen and Bath III: The Pump Room

King's and Queen's Baths, Bath.

Bath's warm mineral springs have been renowned for their soothing properties since Roman times. In Austen's day, the four public baths were open-air and surrounded by handsome colonnades to shelter bathers from the weather. The celebrated King’s, Queen’s, Hot, and Cross-Bath were frequented by the common sort. Men and women bathed together, and you would have seen people entering the water with running sores and open ulcers.  Poor people paid 6d for bathing. More genteel folk used Bath Corporation’s private baths on Stall St, adjoining the King’s Bath, and also the Abbey Baths belonging to Earl Manvers.
Invalids sipped their daily internal dose of Bath water at the Pump-Room which opened early in the morning. It cost a guinea per month to drink the water, plus a tip for the ‘pumper’ who serves it from the marble vase on the south side of the room. The recommended dose was a maximum pint and a half (710 ml) per day, but you did not drink all that at once.Invalids took two half-pint doses in the morning before breakfast, and the last portion at noon. American visitor Benjamin Silliman did not enjoy his small sample of Bath’s celebrated water: ‘The taste... is slightly chalybeate, and disagreeably warm, exciting the idea of an emetic’. 

Pump Room, Bath, 1804.

New arrivals to Bath wrote their name in the visitors’ book kept in the Pump-Room. This entitled them to subscribe to the weekly balls and assemblies. 
In Northanger Abbey Catherine Morland was disappointed that handsome Henry Tilney’s name ‘was not in the Pump-room book...He must be gone from Bath’. 

Pump Room Restaurant, Bath.

From mid-day, including Sundays, people crowded together at the Pump Room to meet friends and parade up and down the room while the orchestra played. Catherine Morland and her friend Isabella ‘eagerly joined each other’ in the Pump Room in Bath ‘as soon as divine service was over’. But after discovering that the crowd there was ‘insupportable, and that there was not a genteel face to be seen... they hastened away to the Crescent, to breathe the fresh air of better company’.
Images:
Pump Room, Bath, 1804. Engraving by John Hill from an aquatint by J. C . Nattes. Library of Congress collection, LC-USZ62-134778.
Photos © Sue Wilkes.

Jane Austen and Bath II

Hetling Pump, Bath.

If you were ill or convalescent during Jane Austen's lifetime, your physician would probably recommend you ‘take the waters’ at one of the many fashionable spas like Bath, Buxton, Cheltenham, Tunbridge Wells, Harrogate and Bristol’s ‘hot wells’. Drinking mineral water, and bathing in it, was thought to relieve many ailments like gout, rheumatism, and the palsy. Your doctor would give you a special diet to follow, and prescribe blood-letting, in addition to taking the waters.  

During Jane's stay in Bath in 1799, her brother Edward tried the waters of the Hetling Pump for his illness,  thought to be gout.  On 2 June, Jane wrote to her sister Cassandra that Edward 'was better yesterday than he had been for two or three days before. He drinks at the Hetling Pump, is to bathe tomorrow, and try electricity on Tuesday'.

A sedan-chair was the most convenient way to reach the baths, and to explore Bath’s busy streets, as Robert Southey explained in his Letters from England (1807): ‘There being in some places no carriage road, and in others so wide a pavement that in wet weather there would be no getting at the carriage, sedan chairs are used instead. They are very numerous, and with their chairmen, who all wear large coats of dark blue, form another distinguishing peculiarity of this remarkable town.’ 
Author photos: 
The Hetling Pump Bath.
A sedan chair and chairmen at Knutsford May Day.