In the West of England and 100 miles from London you find a treasure that’s thousands of years in the making: Old Roman Baths in a city called Bath that have brought multitudes both ancient and modern to witness priceless natural and archaeological wonders. People have emigrated to Bath since even before Roman times for England’s only hot springs as a place of healing and worship. When visiting Bath in 2022, I experienced an enlightening connection with history that I hope to share. Wherever we live as human beings, we tread our footsteps over the lives and legacies of billions. The Roman Baths help illustrate this with wonderfully preserved ruins that anyone can see…for a few pounds.
Getting to Bath
If you’re traveling from London, I would recommend renting a car. Renting a car can be pricy, especially if you’re limiting yourself to only automatic transmissions, but renting can be worth it if you plan on using Bath as a hub to travel to other locations. The car can also save you a lot of time. However, parking can be hard to find during peak visiting times. Bath is a major shopping destination and my group and I drove in right during the peak of Guy Fawkes Day. We found one public parking space after driving around several times. If it weren’t for Google Maps, which I would recommend as your main source of navigation, I think we might have circled that town for eternity.
Knowing this, if you’re uncomfortable driving or you prefer public transportation, bus and train options are available. You can find them at:
https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/visit
This website is useful because they’ve simplified your choices to the most prudent. National Express has a bus service from the Heathrow and Gatwick airports and after a couple hours or so you’ll find yourself a five-minute walk from the Roman Baths.
The train station is called Bath Spa, and the slowest but cheapest option is London Waterloo. More expensive but faster services are available.
What to Learn at the Baths
The Audio Tour of the Roman Baths in Bath offers an informative look into the lives of Roman people in about 60 AD. The Romans named the town Aquae Sulis, or the waters of Sulis, after the Celtic goddess worshipped at the hot springs before the romans arrived. The Romans associated Sulis with Minerva.
The baths in Roman days were a complex system of pools of varying temperature for bathing. There’s evidence that people would come as a sort of pilgrimage from across the empire to experience the warm healing effects of the mineral water.
They would even heat stones to make a hot floor for bathers.
These examples only touch a small part of the vast knowledge found under the ground at the Roman Baths. The real wholistic lesson I took away came from the overarching theme of syncretism.
Natural Subterranean Syncretism
At the end of the museum tour, we had the opportunity to drink the water after its purification. The walls around the fountain were full of quotes throughout history of the believed healing benefits:
When I drank a cup of the water, I couldn’t help but feel the impact of an amalgamation ancient beliefs, whether I held them the same or not. I thought of the underground veins where the water passed through Celt, Roman, and British worlds under my feet. Studying the history and drinking the water felt like a temporal connection to the long dead, like I could honor them with a few bitter gulps of mineral water.
Natural syncretism isn’t a forced interfaith dialogue or lesson, it’s simply existing alongside ghosts of the past. Visiting the Roman Baths brought me closer to my ancestors, British and Roman, in a way that I didn’t know possible. If you find yourself in or around London, consider taking a side-step westward toward Bath and see these sites for yourself. If you’re a history buff and creative minded like me, you’ll have the time of your life. I was so influenced by my experience that I’m using what I learned for an upcoming novel.
For More Information
I would advise visiting the site I posted above for travel information. Pricing I’m sure is subject to change as well as other visitation guidance. The most important thing is to educate yourself from real sources before going.
For references, all my photos were taken by myself at the museum or borrowed from Unsplash and credit is given to the photographers for their expert work.
We live in a rich world of a million billion legacies. I’m glad we have a place like the Roman Baths where we can learn to appreciate them.
