128 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2018
THE JOURNEYJOE DANIEL PRICE/GETTY IMAGESthe Elder and his son John Wood the Younger.
Ralph Allen owned the many surrounding quarries that
supplied the city with its distinctive yellow stone. Father and son
John Wood were architects, and shaped the upper town—Queen
Square, Gay Street, The Circus and The Royal Crescent—in
neoclassical mansions that glow like gold in sunshine and rain.
The Circus was home to a veritable who’s who from world
history. British general Robert Clive at 14, Gainsborough at 17,
and more recently actor Nicolas Cage. Everyone except Cage has
a brass plaque on their doors to mark their time here. They have
remained private residences so we can’t enter them. We take
a turn around the circle to admire its sheer scale and beauty.
The Circus was an ambitious building project for its time.
Conceived by the father and finished by son, it drew inspiration
from the Colosseum and the Stonehenge with which it shares
proportions. But John Wood the Younger’s finest work was yet
to come, the Royal Crescent. A short walk from The Circus, the
492-foot sweeping crescent with a row of 30 terraced houses
sits high above Bath and offers a breathtaking view of ‘the
country in the city.’ This is where Jane, her sister Cassandra
and many of her characters came for their daily mid-morning
walks, to see and be seen in. This is where every September the
Regency Costumed Promenade takes off, the highlight of the
annual Jane Austen festival.
As we walk down the hill along Gay Street I point to No. 25
where a very reluctant Jane Austen came to stay. Her five years
in Bath were her most unproductive and unhappiest too. Jane
was a country girl. Once the shine of Bath wore off, she hated its
stuffiness, the dancing, shopping and gambling and everything
Bath was famous for. Yet the city was too important to ignore.
So it found a place in two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion. The Austen Centre on Gay Street brings alive her
life and times. If you are a fan, it’s a must visit.
As evening falls we run past Milsom Street, I have one last
thing to show my niece. Back at Abbey Church Yard, at the
entrance to the Roman Bath, is a small plaque that marks the site
of a house long demolished. In^ September, 1816, Mary Godwin,
19, an unmarried mother, moved to the city with her son,
nanny and her stepsister Claire. Mary took up two residences,
5 Abbey Church Yard and a second, five minutes walk away
on 12 New Bond Street. Her lover and her son’s father Percy
Shelley followed soon. The Godwin-Shelleys lived complicated
lives even by Georgian standards. Claire was pregnant with
Byron’s child, Shelley was in debt, and to avoid drawing further
attention to themselves, Mary addressed her letters from New
Bond Street while Shelley wrote his from Abbey Church Yard.
Mary Shelley spent five most tumultuous yet eventful months
of her life in Bath. They were also her most productive. She often
attended scientific lectures at the nearby Kingston Lecture
Room where one day she heard that electricity could be used to
bring inanimate objects to life. The idea stuck and Frankenstein’
was born.
Mary’s lodgings on Abbey Church Yard were pulled down
following the housewife’s complaint of her leaky basement. The
Roman baths were discovered, the Pump Room extended. Today,
a plaque marks the spot where Mary conceived Frankenstein.
Underneath is a vault with an electricity substation that delivers
thousands of volts that light up central Bath.¾One of the finest views in
Bath is from the Victorian
terrace overlooking the
medieval Bath Abbey,
reflected in the waters of the
Roman Baths below.