Jane Austen Centre

A group of friends and I went to Bath, today. For a related blog post about the Roman Baths, please click here.

We stopped by the Jane Austen Centre at 40 Gay Street. The Centre focuses on the years that Austen spent living in Bath which gave her the most fodder for her later novels. The building where the Centre is located is not actually one of the places Austen lived in while in Bath. It is, however, very similar to the house at 25 Gay Street. Both of the houses were built between 1735 and 1760 by the same architects, John Wood the Elder and John Wood the Younger.


Upon entering the Centre, you are taken upstairs for a brief lecture about Austen's history, her family, and her time in Bath. The tour guide then led us down to the permanent exhibition area. The permanent exhibit is devoted to the time that Austen lived in Bath, 1801 to 1806. I liked that the area and the time of the books were really put into context. For example, there was an explanation about salaries and how much a man would have to be worth in order to have various things like multiple servants or a carriage.

One interesting display was the Mystery Dress. This dress was found in pieces in a bag by an antiques dealer. They were able to painstakingly reconstruct the dress and it looks so beautiful! For more information, click on the picture of the sign to see a bigger picture.



Inside the permanent exhibit, there was a temporary exhibit about the costumes used for a ITV presentation of Persuasion. After seeing all of the costumes, I really wanted to see the show!

Roman Baths Museum

Some of the class went to Bath on our research day today. For a related post about Bath, please click here.

The site of the Roman Baths had been sacred even before the Romans arrived in Britain. The hot springs found in Bath are the only ones in England and the rest of the United Kingdom. For this reason, ancient peoples used to come there and offer sacrifices and honor the gods of the spring. When the Romans arrived, they dedicated the baths to the goddess, Minerva. The Roman Baths Museum does a good job of informing visitors about the area's history and is one of the most well-preserved ancient Roman spas in the world.


The columns and statues that a visitor sees today around the Great Bath are not actually an original part of the ancient spa. These are Victorian additions. The water in the Great Bath is green because of the algae reaction to the sunlight. In Roman times, the Great Bath would have been covered and the water would have been a normal colour.

My favourite display at the museum was the "Objects from the spring" area. Some are things you might expect like coins. Over 12,00 ancient coins have been found there. The objects that really interested me were the messages offered to Minerva. Many of these were curses asking the goddess to punish those who had harmed the writer or his or her families. Many more curses than prayers have been found in the spring.

I was disappointed that the display about the signet rings that I had seen in 2003 had been replaced by another display. In the water, many signet rings slipped off fingers or the jewels' fastenings were loosened by the hot water and dropped into the water. Some of the carvings on those were just amazing. My favourite was a picture of a man holding a mare and her foal.

Here is a picture of a hippocamp mosaic.


And here we are sitting on the edge of the Great Bath.