Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

apartments for dressing and disrobing, but these, Dr. Sutherland said in 1760, resembled cells for the dead rather than rooms for the living. In the middle of the bath, over the spring, there was erected in 1699 a wooden structure, surmounted by an octagonal tower, on which was an effigy of Bladud, bearing the inscription:

BLADUD,

Son of LUD HUDIBRAS,

Eighth King of the Britons
From Brute,

A great Philosopher and Mathematician,
Bred at Athens,

And recorded the first Discoverer and Founder of these Baths,
Eight Hundred and Sixty-Three Years before Christ,

That is,

Two Thousand Five Hundred and Sixty-Two Years,
to the Present Year

One Thousand Six Hundred and Ninety-Nine.

When Queen Elizabeth visited Bath, her steward purchased from the Priory a piece of land abutting on the south side of the King's Bath, and made a cistern in which the poor might bathe. The heat of the water in this was much more temperate, for it was supplied by the overflow of the King's Bath. Originally known as the New Bath, it was renamed the Queen's Bath in 1615, after its use by Queen Anne, the consort of James I., under the following circumstances: "As the Queen was bathing in the King's Bath, there arose from the bottom of the cistern, just by the side of her Majesty, a flame of fire like a candle, which had no sooner ascended to the top of the water than it spread itself upon the surface into a large circle of light, and

[graphic]

THE KING AND QUEEN'S BATHS, INCLUDING THE GREAT PUMP ROOM, AT BATH In the niche on the right-hand side is a Statue of King Bladud, supposed to have been the first discoverer of these Baths 863 years before Christ

and then became extinct. This so frightened the Queen, that notwithstanding the physicians assured her the light proceeded from a natural cause, yet she would bathe no more in the King's Bath, but betook herself to the New Bath, where there were no springs to cause the like phenomena; and from thence the cistern was called the Queen's Bath. It was soon enlarged, and the citizens erecting a tower or cross in the middle of it, in honour of the Queen, finished it at the top with the figure of the Crown of England over a globe. on which was written in letters of gold, Annæ Regina Sacrum."*

66

The remaining baths were situated in the south-west part of the city. The Hot Bath was subsequently reserved for the inmates of the Mineral Water Hospital, but the privilege lapsed through disuse when the water was conveyed in pipes to that establishment; and the adjoining Lepers' Bath, with an area of ten by eight feet, was used only by the Lepers' Hospital. More important than these was the Cross Bath, 'temperate and pleasant, having eleven or twelve arches of stone in the sides for menne to stande under in tyme of reyne, so called from the cross in the middle of it."† Leland noted the cross in 1538, but the original ornament was replaced in 1687 by the Earl of Melford, Secretary of State to James II., as a memorial to that monarch's consort, who was cured by the waters. Mr. Tyte relates how fanatics saw in the decorations some emblems of idolatry, and that it was

* Warner: "History of Bath.”

† Leland: “Itinerary.”

much defaced by pious Protestants; especially during the rebellion of '15.*

Just in the midst a marble cross there stands
Which popish minds with pious awe commands,
Devoid itself of power to cure our woes,

Yet deck'd with monumental crutches, shows
What mighty cures that wondrous pool has done.†

The Cross Bath, Pepys noted, was frequented almost exclusively by the gentry. "Up to four o'clock," wrote the diarist, on June 13, 1668, “being by appointment called up to the Cross Bath, where we were carried one after another, myself and wife, and Betty Turner, Willett, and W. Hewer. And by and by, though we designed to have done before company come, much company come; very fine ladies; and the manner pretty enough; only, methinks it cannot be clean to go so many bodies together in the same water. Good conversation among them that are acquainted here, and stay together. Strange to see how hot the water is; and in some places, though this is the most temperate bath, the springs so hot as the feet not able to endure. But strange to see, when women and men herein, that live all the season in these waters, that cannot be but parboiled, and looke like the creatures of the bath! Carried away, wrapped in a sheet, and in a chair, home; and there one after another thus carried, I stayed above two hours in the water, home to bed, sweating for an hour; and by and by comes musick to play to me, extraordinarily *"Bath in the Eighteenth Century." † "Description of Bath: A Poem,"

« VorigeDoorgaan »