Bath is a city where history is key to its charm, its appearance and its tourist appeal. It is also a city with a population of very active historians. Their efforts to improve our understanding of the past are celebrated at the Bath History Festival, hosted by Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on 16 and 17 November.
It’s a chance to catch up with the latest research, hear about some of the fascinating findings and get a flavour of how historians continue to enrich our knowledge and develop the heritage economy.
Since 1727, when the celebrated bronze Head of Minerva was dug up by workmen in Stall Street, the pursuit of knowledge about the city’s Roman past has accelerated. One of the greatest figures in that search, archaeologist Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, inspired the city to develop the Roman Baths complex as an educational and visitor attraction. He will relate how the story of Roman Bath was uncovered over centuries, and raise questions still unanswered.
Other academics have turned their researches to important but lesser known episodes and trends in Bath. Professor Steve Poole at the University of the West of England (UWE) has been investigating waves of popular protest after the Parliamentary defeat in 1831 of the bill to reform politics and banish pocket boroughs (it eventually passed as the Great Reform Act in 1832) He analyses the Bath Reform Riot. Women’s social and political activism in Bath in the 1920s is the focus of Professor June Hannam, from UWE and Larkhall History Society.
We have our modern view of Jane Austen’s Bath, but Bath Spa University researcher Ellis Naylor will reveal how the Edwardians portrayed their Georgian predecessors in the Bath Pageant of 1909. Fellow postgraduate Stephen Bridge will focus on how Freemasonry in Bath and Wiltshire between Waterloo and the First World War influenced, and was influenced by, civic society.
Bath Abbey provides an enormous number of leads on the people memorialised on its walls and floor. A team of enthusiasts have been delving into the individuals’ stories and building a database to record the further details. Volunteers John Taylor and Ian Herve will give a glimpse of this work.
The discovery – by History of Bath Research Group secretary David Crellin and colleagues – of miniatures of the celebrated architects John Wood the Elder and Younger has been widely admired. David has also been investigating the Woods’ graves beneath the floor of Swainswick Church just outside the city. Key to this has been collaboration with volunteers from Bath and Counties Archaeological Society (BACAS). John Oswin and John Samways refined a geophysics technique to look for vaults below church floors, and in some cases voids in walls. Learn how they give old churches a non-invasive 21st century going over and how they helped with research into the Woods.
John Wood the Younger created one of Bath’s iconic attractions, the Assembly Rooms, where the builders are expected in 2025 for a major refurbishment. The latest historical research is crucial to plans to bring the building back to life. All eyes will be on the National Trust as the project unfolds. Find out what underpins the charity’s ambitions with Curator Emily Roy. Her talk is ‘Researching the Rooms: history in action at Bath Assembly Rooms’.
To Book: https://www.brlsi.org/whatson/bath-history-festival/
