The Roman Baths

Printed on archival watercolour paper with waterbased inks, these fine art reproductions are a true and faithful reproduction of an original watercolour painting by local artist Irene Marsh.

Irene’s original paintings are held in private collections around the world, admired for their remarkable detail and delicate craftsmanship. Each original watercolour often took up to a year to complete, as Irene worked meticulously with a magnifying glass and fine brush to capture every subtle nuance — a testament to her extraordinary patience and skill.

The History

The Roman Baths are a well-preserved thermae (hot spring) in the city of Bath, England.

The water comes from rainfall on the nearby Mendip Hills, that percolates through limestone aquifers to a depth of between 2,700 and 4,300 metres (8,900 and 14,100 ft). Geothermal energy raises the water temperature here to between 69 and 96 °C (156.2 and 204.8 °F). Under pressure,

the heated water rises along fissures and faults in the limestone, until it bubbles up from the ground into the baths. This process is similar to an enhanced geothermal system, which also makes use of the high pressures and temperatures below the Earth's crust. Hot water at a temperature of 46 °C (114.8 °F) rises here at the rate of 1,170,000 litres (257,000 imp gal) every day.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the baths may have been a centre of worship used by Celts; the springs were dedicated to the goddess Sulis, who was later locally identified with Roman Goddess Minerva.

The name Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, leading to the town's Roman name of Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis"). A Roman temple was constructed in 60–70 AD and the bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years. During the Roman occupation of Britain, and possibly on the instructions of Emperor Claudius, engineers drove oak piles into the mud to provide a stable foundation and surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. In the 2nd century it was enclosed within a wooden barrel-vaulted building, and included the caldarium (hot bath), tepidarium (lukewarm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath). After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the first decade of the 5th century, these fell into disrepair and were eventually lost due to silting up and flooding. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests the original Roman baths were destroyed in the 6th century.

However the area around the natural springs was redeveloped several times during the Early and Late Middle Ages.