Bath

‘You must go to Bath’, said Tim and Olivia when we ran into them at the Palace. Barb and Michael were equally adamant. ‘Make sure you get to Bath.’

So we went to Bath, from Paddington again, across the Sounding Arch at Maidenhead, and all the way across the waist of England, in only ninety minutes. A sunny and warm day in London became a cloudy and cool day in Bath.

At the door of Bath Abbey an elderly man took our donation and asked where we were from. ‘Australia’, we replied.

‘USA’, he said.

‘No, Australia.’

‘Espagna.’ He reached for the Spanish leaflet.

‘No, Australia.’ As we walked away Megan said, ‘There you go, honey, you could’ve been as deaf as him.’

Edgar was crowned the first King of England at the Abbey in 973 A.D. Since then it has been completely re-built once, and repaired lots more times, including after minor damage in WWII. The stained glass is nothing to write home about if you’ve seen Chartres and Cologne – typical Victorian, like the stuff I grew up with at Cronulla. But the fan vaulting of the roof reflects the light so that it seems brighter inside than out. It also feels good. Like Saint Vulfran’s in Abbeville, you get a strong feeling that this is a working church, with a ministry to its parishioners.

Our chief interest were the memorials. Arthur Philip, the first governor of New South Wales, and who died near Bath, is remembered with a plaque and Australian flag on the northern wall. On the other side of the nave we found the plaque for Richard ‘Beau’ Nash, the Master of Ceremonies (that was his title) at Bath for much of the eighteenth century. Ensuring that all social events proceeded without gaffes or embarrassment, he did more than anyone else to establish the town as a fashionable winter resort:

If social Virtues make rememb’rance dear,
Or Manners pure, on decent rule depend;
To His remains consign one gratefull Tear,
Of Youth the Guardian, and of All the Friend.


The Roman Baths are just across the square from the Abbey, in the middle of Bath cheek by jowl with shops and other businesses. This would have presented problems to those wishing to present the Baths in historical context without overcrowding the site. But they have built the museum around the baths in such a way that there isn’t a wasted square metre. We had lunch in the Pump Room, the legendary venue of many a Regency gathering, and where a young musician from Germany, of whom we shall hear more, regularly played oboe in the orchestra gallery.


Up the hill from the main part of the town is the upper crust area, the most-desired real estate in both Regency and modern times. The Assembly Hall was another important venue for all sorts of social engagements, where many a social career was launched and consolidated under Nash’s watch.


A little further west you come to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, two of the finest examples of Georgian architecture anywhere. They represent a classic solution to the form and function problem, and look impressive by anybody’s standards.



Back down the hill, where the middle class lived, is 19 New King Street, now the William and Caroline Herschel Museum. William was the young musician, who came from Hanover in the late eighteenth century to earn a living playing and mounting concerts for himself and his sister Caroline, a singer. But there professional life was eclipsed by their hobby. William was a gifted astronomer who made his own telescopes (to Caroline’s chagrin and the detriment of the flagstones in his workshop, cracked by molten metal). It was in the backyard at New King Street that William discovered the seventh planet, Uranus, in March 1781. (This impressed me more than the Abbey or the Baths. I’ve looked at the planets from my backyard. Like seeing where Thunderbirds was made, it’s the connections with your personal history that are more exciting, not someone else’s.)

Under the patronage of King George III, William became a professional astronomer for the rest of his life, cataloguing many stars and discovering infra red radiation. Caroline learned astronomy to assist her brother, but became notable in her own right, discovering eight comets and being honoured by the Royal Society and the University of Edinburgh.



On the train back to London Megan and I tried to think of other musicians with a significant link to astronomy. We came up with Brian May of Queen and Bryan Cox of D:ream (Things Can Only Get Better - you’d know it if you heard it). Any others?