Royal Victoria Park, Royal Crescent and Less Regal Sights in Bath

I took another day trip from Bristol to Bath today. In Bath, I started in the Royal Victoria Park, moved on to Royal Crescent, and ended the morning in the museum in No. 1 Royal Crescent.

Royal Victoria Park

My walking tour app tells me that Royal Victoria Park is the first park to bear Queen Victoria’s name. It got the jump on subsequent Victoria parks elsewhere by being named Royal Victoria Park before she was Queen. When the 57–acre park opened in 1830, Victoria was an 11-year-old princess.

In addition to simply wandering around, I had a destination in Royal Victoria Park in mind: Its botanical garden. I like botanical gardens. Looking at Google Maps to find the direction of the garden, I saw there was a decent-sized blue blotch labelled “Fish Pond” on the way.

I figured that if I stopped by the fish pond, I could likely get some smashing pics of fish in case any fish-lovers serendipitously stumble upon my humble travel scribbling on the web, namely the crap you’re reading now. Furthermore, there’s a fish-loving regular reader who I want to encourage to keep coming back.

That’s what I figured. Sometimes my figuring fails me.

I found the feature that Google Maps labels “Fish Pond.” Its irregular-shaped outline is distinctly defined by shallow, hard walls. However, unless local fish have evolved to breathe open air directly and have sprouted legs for locomotion, I don’t think any will frequent the pond presently. It was bone dry when I was there.

It’s one thing when the DLJSSIA (Don’t Let Joel See Stuff International Association) closes a building of interest when I’m around. But when it deprives me of the opportunity to photograph fish for this journal, well, that’s going too far! Far, far, far too far. Action needs to be taken. People should write emphatic letters to newspapers, Members of Parliament, and City Councillors. Grumpy old men and grumpy old women should pointedly utter loud harumphs. Threatening, but non-violent raisings of fists would not be out of order, I tell ya.

I pressed on to the botanical garden. It was lovely. Gently winding paths twist past flowers, trees, bushes, lawns and plentiful benches.

The leaves of one of the trees were flaming red when I was there today, October 1st. I’m typically a very literal person, but not in this case. The leaves didn’t combust. I meant only that they were a bright red.

The leaves of a couple of other trees in the botanical garden had turned an attractive orangey colour.

One of the paths in the botanical garden runs beside a lawn surrounded by trees. A sculpture that appears to be sculpted on a large tree trunk sits on the lawn.

A café kiosk is situated on the other side of the path from the lawn. It has small, round tables and chairs set up higgledy-piggledy on the grass. That is to say, the tables were round, not the chairs. The chairs were perfectly normal. That’s not to say there’s anything abnormal about a circular café table top, you understand. In fact, it’s to be expected.

Oh, never mind. The point is, I bought a cappuccino and a pastry, snagged a table, sat, and enjoyed my mid-morning refreshment and the scenery.

Panning out to consider the larger expanse of the encompassing Royal Victoria Park, it’s a lovely, large park with lawns, trees, flowers, paths and lots of benches. Now that I think of it, the broader Royal Victoria Park is a lot like the botanical garden within it. The difference is that everything is more spread out and less refined than in the botanical garden. And the paths are straighter and more purposeful outside the garden.

About those plentiful benches, in relatively recent posts, I repeatedly relayed my rapidly evolving appreciation of the joy of benches. There are plentiful, perfectly proportioned wooden benches throughout Royal Victoria Park. I took advantage of one in the botanical garden and another elsewhere in the park. On them, I took in the scenery, listened to bird songs, including hooting that I assume came from an owl, and quietly, naturally grew a tad older.

More pictures of Royal Victoria Park:

Royal Crescent

Royal Crescent, which is very close to Royal Victoria Park, is home to a row of sand-coloured, stone-block townhouses. “Row” isn’t quite the right word. It carries a connotation of being straight. It’s not straight.

The street and the townhouses form an arc of what would, if complete, be a gargantuan oval, or possibly a circle. It’s not nearly complete in that respect. However, it is complete as a street and a multi-unit residential building.

The shape is what one might call a crescent. If you’ve paid even the slightest attention, you’d know that someone did call it that. Its name is, to repeat myself, Royal Crescent.

I don’t know if any royals ever lived there, but Royal Crescent has a regal look.

Between every window, there is a vertical, stone cylindrical column. It’s handy that they are vertical because otherwise they’d be rows, which would spoil the effect.

The columns begin at the base of the first floor (i.e., the floor above the ground floor). They continue to the top of the second floor (the third floor by North American floor-numbering norms). The capitals at the top of the columns have stone curls on either side of the column.

There is a sloped roof above the lintel resting on the columns. There are dormer windows in the roof, so I think the townhouses have four above-ground floors.

The townhouses face a giant lawn. The section of the lawn closest to the townhouses is strictly for “subscribing residents.” That section is rounded along the road in front of the townhouses, but flat at its far end. Behind that, there is a larger rectangular lawn that’s open to the public. Behind the public lawn is Royal Victoria Park. I told you it was close.

I can’t imagine what the townhouses on Royal Crescent rent or sell for. But I don’t imagine I will ever be able to afford it. (Unless, that is, this journal starts getting millions of page views each day, and I can monetize it. That’s millions of times more page views than it gets at the time of writing. So, it’s not particularly likely.)

No. 1 Royal Crescent

A museum currently occupies No. 1 Royal Crescent. The building was constructed 250 years ago and was the first house on Royal Crescent. It’s a large Georgian townhouse furnished with period pieces.

Visitors must follow a prescribed route through the museum. Footprints on the floor at the entrance to and exit from each room mark the route.

In every room, speakers play a scripted story in multiple acts. A couple of rooms also have videos of actors portraying one or more of the characters speaking in that room.

The ticket seller explained that the story is based on a fictional family and its servants. Despite being fictional, the characters are based on real people. The ticket seller didn’t say whether it is based on specific real people or simply an amalgam of stereotypical real people.

The audio is played through stationary speakers in each room, not a handheld audio guide that travels with each visitor. I arrived just after the performance finished playing in the first room. The ticket seller said I could either quickly look in the room and then run along to follow the story as it progressed through each room.

The next iteration was to start in five minutes. I decided to wait. As I left one room after the narration finished there and went to the next, the narration in that room started shortly after I arrived. I proceeded through the rooms in that fashion.

The tour went through the upstairs rooms where the rich family lived when they came to Bath for the season to get away from the big city and to take the waters. It also went down to the basement where the servants worked.

The story included discussions of the activities the family would get up to in Bath, the balls they’d go to, the dinners they’d have, the people they’d meet, their social habits, the hunt for suitable husbands for the two daughters, the rogueishness of one of the sons, and the work life of the servants. This was related not as narration, but as characters conversing with other members of the family and servants talking among themselves.

A sign in the kitchen said that, “Traditionally, wealthy households in Britain preferred male cooks, ideally French, as they were regarded as the most skilled – and the most expensive. However, by the mid-18th century many smaller households were employing women because their wages were lower; a male cook was paid about £60 a year, whereas a female cook was rarely paid more than £10.”

Let the loud, justifiable harumphing begin.

After a while, I found the audio a bit tedious, but I stuck with it. The Georgian furniture was attractive and, tedium aside, the insight into the life of a rich Georgian family was interesting.

After leaving the museum, I found a pleasant little café close by and enjoyed lunch.