There is so much to detail about this city that it becomes necessary to place some of the sights into a general entry.
First off is the Jane Austen Centre at 40 Gay St. This is a permanent exhibition telling the story of her Bath experiences and the effect those experiences had upon her writing. She is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents. She paid two long visits here towards the end of the 18th century and lived here from 1801 until 1806.
Her intimate knowledge of the city is reflected in two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both of which are largely set in Bath. The city is still much as she would have known it, preserving in its streets, buildings, and townscapes the elegant and well-ordered world she portrayed so well in her novels. The Georgian town house at number 40 has displays and features depicting life in Bath during her time and the importance of the city in her life and work.
Next is the William Herschel House & Museum at 19 New King St. It was from this house that that he discovered Uranus in 1781 using a telescope of his own design. Herschel pushed out the boundaries of astronomical knowledge during his time and particularly improved upon the building and design of telescopes.
The house was inaugurated as a museum in 1981, exactly 200 years after his planetary discovery. The property was fully restored in 1981 and then again in 2000.It is by no means grand but represents a middle-grade Georgian townhouse, typical of artisans and tradesmen of the epoch.
It is part of a terrace dating from 1764 and is laid out over five floors. Although Herschel was in fact an amateur astronomer, his discoveries were enormously significant. Apart from his discovery of Uranus, he also increased the dimensions of our own galaxy via his observations, discovered the satellites of Saturn, the rotation of that planet’s ring system, and the motions of binary stars.
The next object on the walk is what I call the "Hand Fountain." Although a blatant recent addition to the city’s sites, it is nevertheless a worthwhile detour. It is to be found in a tiny mews just by the Theatre Royal and is a small fountain. "Nothing much there you," may think, until you realise that it’s circumference is emblazoned with hand prints of famous stars who’ve trodden the boards at the theatre. "Hands" include Peter Ustinov, Susan Hampshire, and Hayley Mills.
My last "lesser-known" stop on this tour is at Raby Street, on the way up to Combe Down. At the lower end of the street, on the left as you ascend the hill, is a terrace of elegant, balconied townhouses. The last house in this terrace at the far end was once home to my hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The house is not open to the public, but it is a worthwhile sight to behold.
Most of Brunel’s life was indelibly linked to Bristol, where many of his engineering triumphs are to be found. However, the Great Western Railway, probably his biggest feat ever undertaken, runs through the centre of Bath, and he designed the station as well as the ornate, castellated viaduct that carries the lines into and out of the city.
The natural contours as you run both in to and out of Bath meant that the building of this section of the GWR facilitated many bridges and viaducts, all either designed or built by Brunel. This is because Bath sits in a relatively low valley, and to run the line right down to city level would have meant impossible gradients for the locomotives to cope with. Bath Spa station is as ornate a station as you will find anywhere on Britain’s rail network.