Bath and North East Somerset: Georgian Grandeur Below the Mendip Hills
Bath earned its UNESCO World Heritage status for good reason. The Roman Baths, fed by Britain's only natural hot springs, have drawn visitors for two thousand years. Above them, the Georgian city that John Wood the Elder and his son designed in honey-coloured Bath stone remains one of the most architecturally coherent cities in Europe. The Royal Crescent, the Circus, Pulteney Bridge with its shops spanning the River Avon — these are not museum pieces but lived-in streets where students from two universities share the pavements with tourists and long-established residents.
The wider borough takes in Keynsham (halfway to Bristol, with its Cadbury factory now gone but the Somerdale development replacing it), Midsomer Norton and Radstock in the former Somerset coalfield, and rolling countryside that runs south towards the Mendip Hills. Jane Austen lived here and set two novels in the city. She reportedly did not much care for it, though the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street has made a thriving business from her association regardless.
Property prices rank among the highest outside London and the South East. The local economy blends tourism, higher education (the University of Bath is a Russell Group institution), creative industries, and professional services. The Thermae Bath Spa, opened in 2006 after years of delays and cost overruns, finally gave the public a way to bathe in the thermal waters again.
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Bath earned its UNESCO World Heritage status for good reason. The Roman Baths, fed by Britain's only natural hot springs, have drawn visitors for two thousand years. Above them, the Georgian city that John Wood the Elder and his son designed in honey-coloured Bath stone remains one of the most architecturally coherent cities in Europe. The Royal Crescent, the Circus, Pulteney Bridge with its shops spanning the River Avon — these are not museum pieces but lived-in streets where students from two universities share the pavements with tourists and long-established residents.
The wider borough takes in Keynsham (halfway to Bristol, with its Cadbury factory now gone but the Somerdale development replacing it), Midsomer Norton and Radstock in the former Somerset coalfield, and rolling countryside that runs south towards the Mendip Hills. Jane Austen lived here and set two novels in the city. She reportedly did not much care for it, though the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street has made a thriving business from her association regardless.
Property prices rank among the highest outside London and the South East. The local economy blends tourism, higher education (the University of Bath is a Russell Group institution), creative industries, and professional services. The Thermae Bath Spa, opened in 2006 after years of delays and cost overruns, finally gave the public a way to bathe in the thermal waters again.
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