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The vacation visitor travelling in the south and west of England is inevitably confronted with an embarrassment of riches. There is the promise of yet another landmark over every hill. Ancient Stones and Henges vie with Iron Age forts and feudal castles for your attention. The doors of medieval country houses are open to you. Palatial Stately Homes, filled with heirloom antiques and fine art from a leisured past, stand proudly in their landscaped parkland.
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We left Salisbury enriched by our two day sojourn in that lovely medieval cathedral city. Our destination was Bath, older by some 1000 years than Salisbury. The ancient city owes its prosperity to the hot thermal waters bubbling up from the heated, pressured, depths of the earth where diamonds form.
The hot springs were already revered as sacred by the local Celtic tribes when the conquering Romans transformed the springs into a fashionable spa and temple complex 1900 years ago.
When the Roman Legions were withdrawn in the 5th century to defend the crumbling Empire, the hot springs were all but forgotten. For centuries washing and bathing were considered, if not indecently decadent, doubtlessly dangerous to ones health and morals. But a visit by Queen Anne in 1702 gave the hot springs a renewed lease of life, catapulting this quiet rural town, centered around its 15th century Abbey, into instant fashion with High Society.
In just a few years Bath emerged from its medieval chrysalis, transformed by architects John Wood, father and son, into a stately city of Palladian grandeur, elegant venue for fashionable Georgian aristocracy and idle rich who came to "take the waters", and lead a frenetic life of Masked Balls, gambling and dissipated dalliance.
