Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Almost the first job I did when I came to Bath in 1980 was to record the Roman and medieval walls of the King’s Bath exposed during works for the new displays in the Roman Baths Museum. The plan was to relay a floor which had been built in the 1880s and to create modern records of whatever was revealed. Rather good accounts of the Roman structures had been made the first time around so I had a fair idea of what to expect; but I was puzzled by what I saw when the old floor was taken up. The Roman walls were certainly there but were obscured by all sorts of other structures-in particular by a massive wall with semicircular niches in one face. I soon realised that this was the northern wall of the medieval King’s Bath built over the Roman wall: but why did it not appear on the old drawings? It was big enough and clear to see. The notes of the archaeologists at the time make it clear that they realised what was there; but in a sense they simply did not see it. The Roman remains were what they sought: medieval Bath was invisible. To the visitor today medieval Bath is similarly invisible. The signs the guide books the tours and the publicity all talk about Bath the Roman City and Bath the Georgian City: it is as if there were nothing in between. Indeed one could say that for the modern visitor this is true: Bath has no timber-framed houses overhanging che – and the only publicised (LL)