Leaving Stroud for Bath, one ascends the valley towards Nailsworth, a busy locality, where the weaving of broadcloth is the chief industry. There are also flock factories and workshops where beech—'the weed of the oolite'—is used in making beds, gunstocks, and umbrella-sticks.
A little beyond Nailsworth the road comes out on the ridge of wind-swept hills, and continues a slightly undulating course southwards to Bath, a distance of over twenty miles, without a village and scarcely a hamlet on the whole journey. There are wide views in both directions, and some grand panoramas across the Severn.
After dropping down from the level of the downs, one turns to the right and enters the ancient city of
BATH
This wealthy, picturesque, and still popular watering-place, is described at some length in another volume of this series—the Southern Section of England—and it must therefore be dealt with in the briefest fashion here. The thermal springs attracted the Romans to the spot, and of their city Aquæ Solis there are probably very considerable remains beneath the present city. The Baths themselves have been excavated, and several feet below the street-level one can now see the Roman tanks filled, as they were some sixteen centuries ago, with the steaming waters which still bring many ailing folk to the town. Besides the baths there is the Abbey Church, a magnificent example of late Perpendicular work, crowded with memorials to distinguished visitors and residents of Bath, whose virtues and achievements are not overlooked on the marble tablets.
Town Plan No. 16—Bath.
Pulteney Bridge, like the Ponte Vecchio, is lined with shops, but the famous bridge at Florence quite eclipses this structure of a much later and less artistic age. In walking through the streets of Bath one cannot fail to be struck by several of the Georgian façades, whose dignity and classic perfection reflect the formal manners of the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Beau Nash drew admiring and envious eyes upon his elaborately-attired person as he passed along the stone-built streets of the great centre of smart society when George was King.