Bath - Abbey

Bath a city with a population of nearly 100.000, is named after its Roman-built baths. The city became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

The city became a spa with the Latin name Aquae Sulis around 60 AD when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon.

Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century.

Claims were made for the curative properties of water from the springs, and Bath became popular as a spa town. In the 16th and 17th centuries, aristocrats and even monarchs came here for a cure and made the place famous. The Queen of England was a guest in 1702. The steep rise as a fashionable spa resort of world renown began. By 1800, the population had grown to 34,000 thanks to the spa, making Bath the eighth largest city in England.

The former abbey church of Bath was originally the church of a Benedictine monastery, but has since become the episcopal see of the diocese of Bath and Wells and is now a parish church. In 1088, 22 years after the Norman conquest of England, it was decided to build a representative bishop's church in the Anglo-Norman style. This was badly damaged in the 13th century and rebuilt in the Perpendicular style from 1499. The cathedral of the diocese of Bath and Wells went to the English royal family after the Act of Supremacy and the subsequent separation of the English Church from Rome. In 1574, Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered a restoration, which lasted until 1611. During the 1820s and 1830s buildings, including houses, shops and taverns which were very close to or actually touching the walls of the abbey were demolished and the interior remodelled