27th March 29023

Drone visiting;  After looking up where I live now, I thought I might visit where I had lived before.  Thirty years in Bath is quite a while.  My son still lives there and walks most days for exercise in his part of it..  

The first thing to strike me, was the stonework of the whole city, Bath stone is simply called Bath Stone, described as golden, though I would call it a dull cream mostly.  The mines the stones were taken from were Combe Down and Bathampton.  But its light colour gives the city a flush of cleanliness, something that is sadly lacking in the town I now live in, with its light film of industrial coal blackness.  I am not contrasting here only seeing it as it is.  After all as a child I was brought up in the 'Black Country' or the Midlands where grottiness reigned when I grew up.

Bath is of course a tourist town, the population of tourists often equalling the inhabitants and has the usual problems with traffic.  But it's prime beginning as a Roman town with hot springs plus Bath Abbey are must places to visit.

I see it through its Roman history, the villas on the outskirts of the city show colonisation by the retirees.  It has plenty of myths,  Bladud its original founder.  Who, suffering from leprosy and working as a herdsman for pigs, noticed how the pigs wallowed in the hot spring.  So he decided to as well, and of course was cured of leprosy.

John Woods and his son in the 18th century were the architects of the Georgian Bath you see today.  Woods the Elder, was also interested in the myths and legends that were written at the time.  He was also interested in Stonehenge and Stanton Drew Circles (I have written of this elsewhere) and Freemasonry, all these things will be found in the buildings. 

Bath has a strong character in its buildings protected of course by preservation legalities.  Bombing in the second world war, destroyed a part of the city  down by the river, I think mostly Victorian buildings but the great terraces survived as did The Royal Crescent, Queen's Square, The Circus and the Abbey.

Another strand of thought occurred and I found a drone film about Stanton Drew stone circle, the third important stone circle within the South-West area.  So I tapped a few letters and what came up was a Megalithomania's video of Stanton Drew stone circle, which is but a few miles down the road from Bath.

Here we enter the world of sacred lines and geomancy - the art of arranging buildings or other sites auspiciously.  Not something I am a follower of but an interesting train of thought to think about.  John Woods the Elder also like the titillation of things that were not quite true.  And The Circus building's were centred around the dimensions of Stanton Drew and the circle of trees in the centre represented Stonehenge circumference.

The Circus