The Georgian History of the Strand Lane 'Roman' Bath

The Georgian History of the Strand Lane 'Roman' Bath Introduction: a London Survivor The brick tank that goes by the name of the National Trust's Strand Lane 'Roman' Bath may not now be very exciting to look at, but there is good reason to cherish it all the same (Fig. 1). Both the facts of its career through four hundred years of London history and the imagined identities that have been conferred on it along the way make of it a classic London survivor, which has changed its principal function at least three times, and owes as much to the fantasies of the past that Londoners and London visitors have attached to it as it does to any mere empirical reality. At one end of the story stands the puzzle of its origins, which for over a century and a half has generally been supposed to involve a choice between Roman and Tudor or Stuart. At the other end is the bath's current status as an antiquarian curiosity. Here the mystery over original date and function blends with a pleasingly out-of-the-way location, perversely complicated viewing arrangements, and a connection with Dickens's David Copperfield, credited by his creator with 'many a cold plunge' in an 'old Roman bath at the bottom of one of the streets out of the Strand'.1 What is not normally dwelt on, even if acknowledged in outline, is the fact that for a substantial period along the way, from the closing decades of the eighteenth century up until the 1820s or 30s, the Strand Lane relic, whatever its real origins, was part of a working, public cold plunge bath, opened to exploit the later stages of the fashion for cold bathing which had re-emerged at the end of the seventeenth century, flourished through the eighteenth, and began to falter in the early decades of the nineteenth. Indeed, the Strand Lane bath is now the only surviving monument to this important piece of social history in central London, and so deserves to be remembered and celebrated all the more warmly. [Fig. 1] 1 C. Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), Ch. 35; cf. also Ch. 36. The connection, noted in guides to Dickens's London from the 1870s (?) onwards, is highlighted in the 'official' description of the Bath on the notice that stands outside it in Strand Lane (the text of which goes back to an LCC pamphlet of the early 1950s), whence also in the current Wikipedia article. 1 The aim of this paper is to help restore the missing emphasis by giving a newly detailed account of the process by which the Strand Lane establishment acquired its identity as a late-Georgian and Regency cold bath, and of the context in which it did so.2 This phase of its existence, however, cannot be fully understood without some grasp of its origins and first identity on the one hand, and the larger history of the area in which it stands on the other. The story must therefore begin a century and a half earlier, with the site on Strand Lane, some 50 metres downhill from the Strand, and with the old function of the lower stretch of the Lane as the boundary between the Somerset House estate to the west and the Arundel Estate on the West. 3 Some Area History Between 1609 and 1613, old Somerset House, lying just to the west of the bath's location on the Lane, was refurbished and expanded to be the official London residence of the James I's Queen, Anne of Denmark.4 An entire new east wing was added, to house the Queen's private apartments, extending the palace all the way to the eastern 2 This paper is part of larger project devoted to various strands in the story of the bath. I have discussed the issue of its real origins, and presented the argument for identifying it as a fountain-cistern, in 'New Light on the Strand Lane 'Roman' Bath', The National Trust Historic Houses and Collections Annual 2012, 44-7, and 'The Denmark House Helicon: iconography and surviving traces', Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 32.4 (2012), 241-57. There is some provisional general discussion of the bath's attraction as a London curiosity in a couple of entries on the Strandlines website (http://strandlines.org/story/romans-bathing-strand-lane-bath). I hope soon to follow this up with a discussion of the bath's conversion into antiquarian curiosity and of the workings of the myth of its Roman origins. 3 Strand Lane seems to have been put in its present position in the 1540s precisely to mark this boundary, between what was then Edward Seymour's property to the west and Thomas Seymour's to the east: see P. Croot in S. Thurley (ed.), Somerset House. The Palace of England's Queens, 1551-1692 (London: London Topographical Society, 2009), 14. 4 For a full account, see H. Colvin (ed.), History of the King's Works, Vol. IV (London: HMSO, 1982), 254-71. 2 boundary wall of the estate on Strand Lane. The gardens too were redesigned, by the leading Continental garden architect of the day, Salomon de Caus. At the centre of the new royal Privy Garden thus formed, de Caus erected a magnificent grotto-fountain, at least thirty feet across and thirty high, depicting Mount Helicon, with Pegasus and the Muses, and the four great rivers of England.5 Fountains, of course, need water-supplies (in which de Caus had a particular expertise), and it was in fact precisely to be the feeder-cistern for this fountain that the Strand Lane 'Roman Bath' was first built. I have discussed the evidence that establishes this conclusion about the bath's real origins more fully elsewhere. 6 Essentially, the case rests on the convergence of an expert survey, which identifies the surviving fabric of the bath proper as a single build dating from between 1550 and 1650 AD;7 an entry in the Somerset House works accounts for 1611-12, which speaks of the 'Great Cesterne over the Strand Lane which serveth the new Fountaine with water'; and a petition of 1710, quoted and explained below, which locates the cistern precisely where the bath now stands. Between them, these pieces of testimony dispose decisively not only of the always suspect idea of a Roman origin, but also of any connection to Arundel House and the Collector Earl, Thomas Howard, of the sort that sceptics about the Roman story have regularly suggested as an alternative. In compensation for the loss of these glamorous affinities, the bath gains instead a connection with the other great noble palace in the vicinity, Somerset House, and with a major piece of Stuart court iconography, which looked back not to the Roman occupation of Britain, but to the world of Greco-Roman mythology.8 5 For further discussion of the fountain, see R. Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England (London: Thames & Hudson, 1979), 90-92; L. Morgan, Nature as Model: Salomon de Caus and early Seventeenth-Century Landscape Design (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 115-121; and M. Trapp, op. cit. n. 2, 244-54. 6 See Trapp, opp. citt. n. 2. 7 See note 20 below. 8 The Howards did have a mock Roman cold plunge specially made for them, but it was the one designed for Henry Howard at Albury Park, by John Evelyn in 1667: see V. 3 The Denmark House Helicon did not however last long. With Anne of Denmark's death in 1619, and the accession of Charles I and Henrietta Maria in 1625, it became an outdated and unwelcome hangover from an older order, and was probably demolished in the 1630s, as soon as Charles and his Queen had the money to redevelop Somerset House for themselves. What happened to the cistern and the water-house over on Strand Lane in the immediate aftermath is unknown; they may have continued in some kind of use for a period. It is clear at all events that by the early years of the following century they too had become derelict. In 1710, the owner of the mansion house that formerly stood on the site now occupied by Nos 33–35 Surrey Street, who could see the waterhouse ('a little old shed in Strand Lane') just over his back wall, petitioned the Crown to be allowed to take it over, on the grounds that it threatened to fall into his yard; fourteen years later, as emerges from an official report on the condition of the Somerset House estate, it was still abandoned and unused ('the Old Waterhouse … a decayed building of no use').9 Until at least 1724, therefore, there was no bath on Strand Lane, just a fountain cistern in its water-house from 1612 up until the 1630s, and its decaying continuation thereafter. In order to understand the next stage in the story something now needs to be said about other developments in the surrounding area. Once the 1609-13 building campaign was over, the ground plan of Somerset House remained broadly the same up until its demolition and rebuilding by William Chambers in 1776 and after. A large (and controversial) chapel was added over to the west side Rolf, Bathing Houses and Plunge Pools (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2011), 11-14; M. Charlesworth, 'A Plan by John Evelyn for Henry Howard's Garden at Albury Park, Surrey', in T. O'Malley and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds), John Evelyn's 'Elysium Britannicum' and European Gardening (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 289-93. 9 Details in Trapp, opp. citt. n. 2; the petitioner was Thomas Vernon, for whom see further below. 4 for Henrietta Maria, and the south range, fronting onto the gardens, was several times remodelled in the course of the seventeenth century; but there were no substantial alterations over on the east, towards the Strand Lane wall, until the whole house was demolished by Chambers.10 It was otherwise with what stood still further east, on the far side of the Lane, in the Arundel estates. [Figs 2 and 3] Up until the 1670s, the bulk of the space between Strand Lane to the west and Milford Lane to the east was occupied by Arundel House and its extensive gardens, and the fringe of rented properties (the 'Arundel Rents') that filled in the space between house and garden and the Strand to the north, and between house and Milford Lane to the east (Fig. 2). Over against Strand Lane, it seems that the dividing line between the curtilage and the Rents fell roughly level with the position of the old water-house, standing on its isolated patch of royal land. In 1671 the acting head of the family, Henry Howard, Earl of Norwich, obtained an Act of Parliament authorizing him to demolish the old house and redevelop.11 By 1676 some new plots had been measured out and construction work begun, but it was only gradually that the final form of the new layout took shape, with three new streets – Surrey, Norfolk and Arundel – running north to south between the Strand and the river, and a fourth – Howard Street – running across them east to west half way down (Fig. 3). Various individuals took charge of the development of different parts of the estate. The top end of Surrey Street was the particular concern of the father and son Simon and Nevinson Fox, Arundel trustees and agents whose names feature repeatedly in the deeds preserved in the Arundel Castle Archives.12 In the process, they acquired a large parcel 10 For these subsequent phases, see Thurley (ed.), op. cit. n. 3, 45-76; Colvin (ed.), op. cit. n. 4, 261-71. 11 See H. Warne (ed.), The Duke of Norfolk's Deeds at Arundel Castle. Catalogue 2: Properties in London and Middlesex, 1154-1917 (Oving: Phillimore, 2010), xiii-xiv, 31-88. 12 E.g. Warne, op. cit. n. 11, 51-5. 5 of land for their own use and proceeded to build themselves a new home on it: the mansion, already mentioned above, that formerly stood where Nos 33, 34 and 35 Surrey Street now are. A number of considerations suggest that this was a very substantial house indeed. In the St Clement Danes Rate-books, the assessment of the Foxes' property rises from 14/- in 1680, to 1/1/- in 1682, to 3/-/- in 1694 – a very large sum for a private house at this period, and one that placed it second in the street only to the home of the Duke's brother, Charles Howard, a few doors to the south.13 Inside, it was grand enough to have had a stair-well decorated by Louis Laguerre with frescoes of the story of Hercules and Omphale.14 Its imposing exterior attracted the attention of John Strype, who singles it out in his account of the street as 'a fine, large and curious [i.e. elaborate] house.'15 In 1710, following Nevinson Fox's death in 1708, his widow Mary sold the property to the merchant and future M.P. Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park; it was Vernon, known also to history as Alexander Pope's landlord in Twickenham, who in the same year unsuccessfully petitioned the Crown for the grant of the old fountain-house just next to his back-yard. In 1741, Vernon's widow Jane sold the house on to Joseph (later Sir Joseph) Danvers, who had it refurbished and leased it to the Government as office 13 I owe the rent-book data to Dr Roger Bowdler, and the English Heritage file WM 645 Strand Lane: - "Roman Bath" (held in the EH offices at 1 Waterhouse Square). In the assessment for the Four Shillings in the Pound Tax of 1693-4, the tax on the rental value of Charles Howard's house is given as £30, compared to £28 on the Foxes' (with the next most valuable property, Lady Katherine Longeville's, assessed at a mere £11): 'Four Shillings In The Pound Aid 16931694: Middlesex, Duchy Liberty, Middle Ward, -', Four Shillings In The Pound Aid 1693/4: The City of London, the City of Westminster, and Metropolitan Middlesex (1992). URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=20964&strquery=Charles Howard (accessed 4 July 2012). 14 G. Vertue, Note-Books, Volume 24 (London: Walpole Society, 1935), p. 187 [V.125, B.M. 69b]. 15 J. Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster (1720 edn), Book 4, Ch. 7, p. 118, online at http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/strype/TransformServlet?page=book4_117&display=normal 6 and residential space, until it was damaged by fire in 1744.16 Joseph Danvers's son John inherited it in 1753, and it was finally destroyed by a still worse fire in 1765.17 [Fig. 4] Danvers fils rebuilt, in 1766-7, but in the form of three modern terrace houses rather than a single mansion: No. 33 Surrey Street, level with the old fountain house at the south end, and numbers 34 and 35 running north from it towards the Strand (Fig. 4).18 Of these three, 33 and 34 remain; 35 was rebuilt in the second half of the nineteenth century, but can be seen from an estate agent's advertisement of 1867 to have been originally of exactly the same dimensions and layout as its two neighbours.19 Physical survivals, and the second bath Substantial but largely neglected traces of this entire building history still survive, with significant inter-connections (Fig. 5). In the first place, there is of course the bath, recalling the early seventeenth-century expansion of Somerset House and its gardens for Anne of Denmark. But although this is the most obvious and visible survivor, it is far from being alone. Across on Surrey Street, level with the bath and north-east of it, are Nos 33 and 34, which although they do not go back all the way to the original 16 Danvers's attempts to secure some government compensation after the fire are documented in Treasury documents of 1741-5: see W.A. Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, Vol. 4: 1739-41 (1901), 561 (29 Dec. 1741) and Vol. 5: 1742-5 (1903), 671 (Feb. 1745), 698 (June 1745), and 818 (June 1745). See also the London Evening Post for 9-11 October 1744 and the Daily Post for 12 October. 17 The fire was reported in a number of papers; the fullest account is the one in the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser for 15 June 1765. 18 KCL Archives KA/T/21/5/1 (27 May 1767, with back ref. to July 1766); since this contract refers to just two houses (33 and 34), it may be that No. 35 was not built at exactly the same time. 19 Advertisement of Messrs Fuller and Horsey, in the Pall Mall Gazette for 23 November 1867. 7 redevelopment of the Arundel Estate in the 1680s and 90s, at least preserve the last remnants of its later eighteenth-century aspect. In between the basements of these houses and the bath, and only very recently re-identified, are a set of brick vaults shown by expert analysis to date from the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century, between ca 1670 and ca 1710.20 These vaults, which at their southern end exactly fill in the space between the basement of No. 33 and the Strand Lane Bath, then run on northwards behind No. 34,21 must be the remnants of the cellars of the mansion house owned successively by the Foxes, the Vernons and the Danverses (Fig. 6). To this small extent, the first phase of the redevelopment of the Arundel Estate is represented too. [Figs 5 and 6] But there is also one further remnant that now needs to be brought into the picture. Just south of the Strand Lane cistern, in the back basement of the King's College Norfolk Building (the former Norfolk Hotel), covered over by a concrete slab floor but intermittently accessible through a hatchway, is a second, rectangular brick tank, measuring about 4m by 2.5m by 1.6m deep (Fig. 7). The same dating survey as places the Strand Lane Bath fabric between 1550 and 1650, and the brick vaults behind 33 and 34 Surrey Street between 1670 and 1710, dates the fabric of this second tank to the years 1750-1800, though with substantial later patching.22 20 K. Hayward, Building Material Report – Strand Lane ‘Roman’ bath: the results from the sampling and analysis of the building material from the bath and associated structures, London Borough of Westminster (Pre-Construct Archaeology Report No. R11125, November 2011), 1012 and 14-15. I am very grateful to the National Trust and King’s College London for giving permission for this study to be carried out, and to Dr Hayward and Pre-Construct Archaeology for the report. 21 The case for supposing the vaults once ran also behind No. 35 rests on the estate agent's advertisement cited in n. 19 above, which mentions 'arched vaults in the basement'. 22 K. Hayward, op. cit. n. 20. 8 [Fig. 7] The existence of a second bath, once joined to the 'Roman' survivor and working alongside it, is on one level no mystery, as it features already in the first published antiquarian account of the bath, given by John Sanders in Chapter 36 (pp. 165-7) of Volume II of Charles Knight's London (1842). 23 Having repeated and endorsed the story of Roman origins, Saunders proceeds warmly to commend the decision of the proprietors to have a second basin built and restrict access to the older and more venerable one: 'The proprietors, we are happy to say, rightly estimate its value, and have long ago caused another bath to be built and supplied from it; and it is in the latter alone that persons are allowed to bathe.'24 There are moreover numerous further references to a second bath from the second half of the nineteenth century, in which it is named variously as 'the marble bath', 'the Templar's bath', or most often 'the Essex bath', thanks to a romanticizing (and wholly invented) connection with Queen Elizabeth's favourite the Earl of Essex. These references cluster particularly around the decision made by a new owner in 1893 to close down and sell off this second bath, so as to allow the proprietor of the Norfolk Hotel next door to extend his premises all the way back to Strand Lane. It was at this point that the second bath was covered over and reduced to the state in which it now survives. At the same time, its marble cladding, along with (perhaps) some Dutch tiles from the walls and some marble busts and pedestals, were transferred to the 'Roman' basin.25 What has not so far been clarified is exactly when, by whom, and under what circumstances this other bath was built. We have seen that up to 1724 at the very earliest there was no Strand Lane bath of any kind, only a fountain-cistern, used for a couple of decades and then abandoned. 120 years later, when Saunders and Archer paid 23 C. Knight (ed.), London, Vol. II (London: Charles Knight & Co, 1842), 165-7. 24 Knight, op. cit. n. 23, p. 167. 25 The new owner was Mr Henry Glave (c.1822-1903), owner of a New Oxford Street drapery business; copies of his advertising leaflets, mentioning the second bath, are preserved among the Pennington-Bickford papers in the City of Westminster Archives Centre (1301). 9 their visit, there was not just one bath in operation, but a pair of them – or rather, an arrangement in which the old cistern, though now thought of as a former bath, had been reduced once again to the functions of a well and holding-tank, with another, separate basin brought into being to provide for bathers. What had happened in between, and where and how did the conversion from disused cistern to active bathing establishment come about? It is these questions that bring us back to our main theme, the Georgian and Regency history of the Strand Lane, or rather, originally, the Surr(e)y Street cold bath. Mr James Smith, Master of the cold bath in Surry-street According to the received account, the bath first emerges unambiguously into the light of day as a bath in 1784. Listing early collectors of coins and medals in England in Chapter 1 of his An Essay on Medals,26 the antiquarian and numismatist John Pinkerton touches on Thomas, Earl of Arundel, the collector of the celebrated Arundel Marbles, and observes in passing in a footnote that [i]n the cellar of a house in Norfolk Street in the Strand, is a fine antique bath, formerly belonging to this Earl of Arundel, whose house and vast gardens were adjacent. It is a pity that it is not more known, and taken care of. If it could be confidently assumed that Pinkerton's 'Norfolk Street' is a slip for Surrey Street, and that by 'antique' he meant 'Greco-Roman' rather than just 'old', then this might indeed be a reference to our bath, and an early (though isolated and uninfluential) attempt to give it an ancient pedigree. But in fact, there are good grounds for supposing that Pinkerton really did mean Norfolk Street, and was talking about something other than the Strand Lane bath. Several eighteenth-century sources attest the presence, in the cellar of the house on the corner of Norfolk and Howard Streets, of Roman marble sarcophagus, repeatedly viewed in the 1740s and 1750s, and presumably left over from the Arundel collection. It is very likely this that Pinkerton was referring to.27 26 J. Pinkerton, An Essay on Medals (London: Dodsley, 1784), 9. 27 For an anticipation of this conclusion, see E.B. Chancellor, The Annals of the Strand (London: Chapman & hall, 1912), 135. The sarcophagus was seen and drawn by Dr Jeremiah Milles of the Society of Antiquaries in March 1741 (though the drawing of it 10 Pinkerton's evidence can thus be dismissed as irrelevant to the bath's Georgian fortunes. Happily, its place can be filled by something better. There are at least five earlier pieces of evidence, spread out between 1776 and 1783, which between them spell out what look very like the beginnings of the story of the Surrey Street bath as bath, along with the circumstances of the addition of the second basin, and the name of a probable founder. For reasons of clarity, it will be sensible to start with the last of them. On Monday 28 October 1782 The Morning Herald and New Daily Advertiser announced the death 'a few days ago … of a dropsy, at Esher, in Surry,' of a Mr James Smith, identified as the 'master of the cold bath, in Surry-street, Strand.' When this Mr Smith's property came to be auctioned off early in the following year, the advertisement in The Daily Advertiser for 23 January particularized the address as No 33, and described it as comprising not only the larger building on Surrey Street, but also a substantial back-house on Strand Lane: Two elegant and convenient Leasehold Houses, front House 55 Years unexpired ... ; the back-House 52 Years unexpired ... both in exceeding good Repair, attached by a large Yard to each other, with two excellent and convenient goodaccustomed Cold-Baths and Dressing-Rooms adjoining, exceedingly well supplied with a Spring called The Holywell Spring Water ..... the back House has a Door leading into Strand-Lane, and another to the Bath ... This already casts considerable light: we have a proprietor, in Mr James Smith, and evidence that the bath was already operating, and operating in its two-basin layout, at least two years before the date of the dubious reference by Pinkerton. But there is more. that he presented to the Society is now lost), and is mentioned also in a much reprinted letter of James Theobald of 10 May 1757: R. Gough, British Topography (London: Payne, 1780), vol. II. 127-31; Theobald's letter was originally printed in C. Howard, Historical Anecdotes of Some of the Howard Family (London: Robson, 1769), 91-110, and again in The Gentleman's Magazine 49 (1779), 298-30. 11 The story can be carried further back in time, thanks to three further advertisements placed by Smith himself over the preceding five years. These same advertisements also strongly suggest, even if they cannot entirely prove, that it was Smith who not only opened up the bath as a bath in the first place, but was also responsible for the addition of the second basin. The earliest of them, carried by the Daily Advertiser on 2 November 1776, simply announced that The Cold Bath, at No. 33, Surry-Street, in the Strand, is now open for the Reception of Ladies and Gentlemen. Terms of Admission, for the Year One Guinea, one Quarter Half a Guinea, or One Shilling for each Time of bathing. The above Bath is supplied with Water from a Spring, which continually runs through it. Eighteen months later the proud proprietor could announce substantial alterations and improvements. The advertisement, carried by the Gazetteer and New Daily Chronicle for 20 May 1778 and the Morning Chronicle two days later, proclaims that THE COLD BATHS, (which were lately the property of Sir Philip Meadows) at No. 33, Surry-street, in the Strand, are much enlarged, and now open for the reception of the Public. They are constructed on a commodious plan, and fitted up with elegance and taste. The most eminent physicians have pronounced the water (which is a constant and pleasing stream running through these baths, and arising from that excellent spring, known by the name of Holy Well Water) to be the most wholesome and salubrious of any in this metropolis. The Proprietor hath spared neither trouble or expence to render these baths worthy the approbation of such Ladies and Gentlemen who will honour him with their subscriptions, and in order to make them perfectly convenient, hath opened a door leading to the baths for the reception of the ladies, in Surry-street, and for the gentlemen in Strandlane. The centrical situation of these baths, and their vicinity to the Inns of Court, make them particularly convenient for the inhabitants thereof, as well as other parts of the town. Constant attendance will be given, and Subscriptions are taken in by the Proprietor, at No. 33, in Surry street, on the following terms of Admission: Ladies 12 and Gentlemen 1l. 6s. for the year, 13s. for the quarter, or 1s. each time of bathing. Children bathing 1s. A third and final advertisement, published in the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser for 7 July 1780, returns to a more modest tone (perhaps suggesting that public response, particularly from a female clientèle, had been less than overwhelming): COLD BATHS, At No 33, Surry-street, in the Strand. The very neat and convenient COLD BATHS, with a pleasant and convenient stream running through the same, is now open for the reception of the public; supplied from an excellent spring lately discovered, which was the late Sir Philip Meadows', and pronounced by the first physicians, the most wholesome and pure water in this metropolis. The situation renders them peculiarly convenient to Gentlemen of the several Inns of Court, as well as the neighbourhood of the Strand, &c. The Proprietor hopes his attention to the neatness of the apartments, and procuring the best attendance and accommodation, will recommend his baths to the favour of the public. There is a door leading from the baths to Strand-lane. A small house to be let furnished. We have a name, therefore, together with a set of dates, and some enthusiastic publicists' prose. How is it best converted into a regular history? And how much more is known, or can be recovered, about this first attested proprietor of the bath as bath? James Smith first features in the St Clement Danes parish rate-books for 33 Surrey Street in 1780,28 but is also mentioned in an Arundel Archive document bearing on that address from June 1775.29 The rate-payer in 1770 was the Wilkesite MP and Lord 28 As reported by Dr R. Bowdler (n. 13 above) from the St Clement Danes rate-books in the City of Westminster Archives Centre. 29 MXD373-374: see H. Warne (ed.), The Duke of Norfolk's Deeds at Arundel Castle. Catalogue 2: Properties in London and Middlesex, 1154-1917 (Oving: Phillimore, 13 Mayor of London for 1771-2, Brass Crosby (1725-93); and if Parker's Ephemeris for 1774 is accurate (rather than simply carrying over outdated material, which is conceivable),30 he did not sell the property for at least another three or four years. This in turn makes it look very possible that the advertisement of November 1776 marks the very first opening of Smith's bath to the public, quite soon after he himself moved in to No. 33 (though a slightly earlier notice could still turn up, and it remains possible that Smith moved into No 33 as tenant before taking over the payment of the rates himself). Of Smith himself, I can so far offer nothing more than what appears in the rate-books, and in his wills of September and October 1782. The latter show him deciding first to bequeath his property to two beneficiaries, the auctioneer William Morgan, of Mr Morgan and Co, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the Esher tea-dealer Robert Simpson, but then revoking the first will and leaving everything to his 'beloved friend' Robert Simpson.31 Smith's wife Sarah is left an annuity of £50, but not any of the principal estate. However, although the leases of both the front- and the back-house at 33 Surrey Street are offered for sale in early 1783, the rate books show her still paying rates for both in 1790, and for the back-house alone in 1800, so she seems to have been adequately provided for. Returning to the advertisements, comparison of the 1776 and 1778 announcements makes it look as if Smith's bath went through two states, with the second considerably more elaborate and ornate than the first. Some allowance must of course be made for publicist's hyperbole, and the possibility that the innovation lies as much in the choice of language as in the actual arrangements. But even so, the combination of the shift from singular (bath) in 1776 to plural (baths) in 1778, the claim that the baths 'are now 2010), 107 (comparing MXD696-697 (ii) on p. 173 for the number of the house next to Smith's). 30 'The Names of the Aldermen of London, with the Places of their Habitations', in Parker's Ephemeris for the Year of Our Lord 1774, London: J. Emerson, 1784, [p. 17]. 31 There is presumably some connection between Simpson's Esher address and the fact that it was in Esher that James Smith died. 14 much enlarged', and the detail of the difference – a separate provision for ladies and gentlemen, with two distinct entrances, not mentioned in 1776 – is hard to dismiss entirely. And even though the last, 1780, advertisement drops the reference to separate provision for ladies and gentlemen and a Strand Lane as well as a Surrey Street entrance, it still maintains the plural 'baths'. On balance, therefore, and in particular when this data is combined with the expert dating of between 1750 and 1850 for the newer of the two structures, it seems the most plausible conclusion that Smith did indeed, as he said, make a substantial addition to the establishment in 1778, and that this consisted of the building and decoration of a second bath. Smith will have begun by discovering that he had a single bath or potential bath attached to the back yard of his new home, and realizing (whether immediately or after an interval) that it offered commercial possibilities. A first experiment convinced him that further investment was needed to make the most of his asset, so he added the second bath and improved the decoration, in the hopes of attracting more and more discriminating clients. The only positive incentive to look for an alternative reading of the evidence is provided by the advertisements' mention of another, earlier name: that of Sir Philip Meadows, who is named as a former owner, of the baths tout court in the 1778 announcement, and of the spring feeding them in 1780 (by which must be meant the older, 'Roman' bath, since it was up through its floor that the water entered at this period). Sir Philip Meadows (1662-1757), Comptroller of Army Accounts for the nearly fifty years from 1708 until his death, did indeed live in Surrey Street in the first half of the 1740s, not in No. 33, but in a large mansion house rented for him by the Government from Sir Joseph Danvers – that is to say, the mansion built by Simon and Nevinson Fox that eventually burned down in 1765, to be replaced by Nos 33-35.32 As has already been seen, we know that at least one owner of the mansion house was well aware of the existence of a cistern – or, at least, of the building covering it – just next door: Thomas Vernon, who unsuccessfully petitioned the Crown for the grant of the property in 1710. 32 See the newspaper reports cited in n. 16 above. 15 Although the same clutch of evidence also shows that the water-house remained derelict and untransformed in 1724, it would in theory have been possible for any owner or occupier subsequent to that date – Vernon in the last two years of his life, his widow Jane, Joseph or John Danvers, or indeed Sir Philip Meadows – to have gained possession, seen the possibilities, and re-commissioned the cistern as either water-tank or bath. But the odds are against it, partly because of the lack of any positive evidence, but more substantially because the analysis of the second bath's remaining fabric already referred to dates it so firmly to the second half of the century, with 1750 as an absolutely earliest date and a preference for something substantially later.33 James Smith's invocation of Sir Philip Meadows therefore seems most likely to have been a piece of name-dropping, designed to recommend the new establishment by association. He himself remains the more likely candidate for the role of true parent of the Surrey Street (Strand Lane) bath. Even if some bathing may have taken place between (say) 1725 and 1775, it was to all appearances he who refurbished the old brickwork, enlarged the facilities, and opened them to public use. Smith's bath, layout and appearance No illustrations survive of the bath in its eighteenth-century state.34 The earliest we have, is Archer's pencil and watercolour sketch of 1841, now in the British Museum, from which the engraving of the bath in Knight's London was also taken (Fig. 8).35 This shows the old 'Roman' bath in its vaulted chamber, very much as it must have been right through the nineteenth century, up until 1893, and presumably was at the end of the eighteenth century as well. Archer however does not show the second bath, or give any idea of the overall layout. For these latter elements we have to rely instead on a combination of inference from the present physical state of the bath and the building(s) 33 K. Hayward, op. cit. n. 20, 10 and 13-14. 34 The Rev. Pennington-Bickford is said to have owned a watercolour sketch of the Essex bath, showing the way through to it from the entrance corridor, and photographs of the basin, made before it was covered over, were sent to the magazine The Builder. 35 British Museum, Prints and Drawings BH/FF10/British PVI. 16 covering it, anecdotal descriptions from later (sometimes much later) in the nineteenth century, and analysis of surviving materials re-used from earlier states of the complex. [Fig. 8] A look at the ground-plan of the establishment in its current state shows that the bath and its entrance passage from Strand Lane are now sealed off both from the back-spaces of No. 33 Surrey Street to the east, and from the second bath to the south; but it clear that connections once existed in both directions. There are steps at the far (east) end of the entrance passage that once led through to one part of the vaults behind the basement of No. 33 Surrey Street; and there is the outline of a door in the east wall of the bath chamber that once gave access from another part of the same vaults. Matching traces of both these doorways can be seen on the Surrey Street side. There is also a third blocked doorway, which apparently once led from the west end of the entrance passage through southwards into the second bath's space; this however seems to be a late nineteenthcentury remnant, rather than a reflection of earlier arrangements. At any rate, the record of an interview with the daughter of the last keeper of the double bath, quoting her on the layout earlier in the century, places the interconnecting door at the east rather than the west end of the entrance passage: 'the entrance to the plunge bath was through the door to the present bath in Strand Lane, straight ahead to the end [my italics] of the annexe, turn right and down two steps to the floor level of the 'Essex' bath room.'36 A connection between the two baths in this latter position would also make sense to accommodate patrons approaching via the basement of No. 33. Something of the view that would have confronted a visitor to the second bath can be recovered from a couple of late nineteenth-century accounts. Writing in 1870, the homeopath Dr Robert Dudgeon describes it as situated 'in an adjoining cellar, lowroofed, whitewashed, and obscurely lighted by a dimmed glass window.' The bath itself, he continues: 36 Mrs Beatrice Holland (née Howell), interviewed on 29 October [?] 1951: xerox of typescript dated 6.11.51 in English Heritage file WM645 (cf. n. 13 above). 17 is a basin 4 yards long by 21/2 wide; sides and bottom of marble slabs; steps leading down to it at one corner; depth about 4 feet 6 inches. Flags of sandstone surround the bath. There are seven boxes for bathers in the passage leading to the bath. The water is delightfully clear, cool, and refreshing, but the atmosphere of the apartment is rather musty and cellar-like, and the size hardly admits of anything in the way of swimming except mere paddling about.37 A second description, in an article in Notes and Queries by the Exeter sculptor and amateur antiquarian Harry Hems, recalls the 'Essex Bath' as 'square in plan, considerably larger than its Roman neighbour, but not quite so deep. There were marble steps at one corner, and the original metal handrail was in situ to assist descent into the pool.'38 Some traces of this decorative scheme survived the decommissioning of the second bath in 1893. Both the marble lining and the sandstone flags referred to by Hems and Dudgeon were transferred to the 'Roman' bath next door,39 and can be seen in their new position in a number of photographs taken between 1894 and the 1920s (Fig. 9),40 although they were stripped off again, as inauthentic, when the now solitary 'Roman' bath passed to the Rector of St Clement Danes, the Rev. William Pennington-Bickford, in 1922. There are moreover grounds for supposing that they, along with another 37 R.E. Dudgeon, 'The Swimming Baths of London', British Journal of Homeopathy 28 (1870), 25-57, at 31-2. 38 H. Hems, Notes and Queries 11 S. VI, 30 November 1912, 432 col. b. 39 A carbon-copy of the works order, dated March 1893, is among the Pennington-Bickford papers at the City of Westminster Archives Centre (cf. n. 25 above). 40 E.g. London Metropolitan Archives SC_PHL_01_533_92_152 and SC_PHL_01_533_92_157, viewable on the City of London Collage website (http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/collage/app); and items XJ109101 and XJ103932 from the Peter Jackson Collection in the Look and Learn History Picture Library (http://www.lookandlearn.com/index.php). 18 element in the decoration of the Roman bath which Pennington-Bickford did leave in place, can be traced back all the way to James Smith's activities in either 1776 or 1778. [Fig. 9] The argument for a connection all the way back to the Georgian state of the bath depends on three potentially converging lines of inference. The first of these concerns the decorative element that has not so far been described. A minor but noticeable ingredient of the current decoration of the bath is a number of glazed ceramic tiles. Some of these – carrying a dark grey on white tulip pattern – clearly belong to the late nineteenth century; as things now are they decorate the jambs of the doorway through from the passage to the bath chamber, and are used as edging in another couple of places, although it is evident from the old photographs just referred to that they once covered a much larger area. But in addition there is also a number of blue-and-white 'Dutch' tiles, to some three or four distinct patterns, which surround the frames of the hatch between the corridor and the bath chamber and of the blocked door to the 'Essex' bath, and make up two large rectangular patches at the east end of the entrance corridor (Fig. 10). From inspection of a photograph, Dr Ian Betts of Museum of London Archaeology has identified two of the types involved as resembling samples elsewhere dated 1760 to 1810, ca 1790, and 1720-1840.41 It is therefore quite possible that these tiles too are refugees, transplanted in 1893 from the walls of the bath next door, where they had been put by James Smith's workmen in the 1770s or shortly afterwards. [Fig. 10] A second line of thought concerns the marble cladding. Small broken scraps of this can still be seen in the corners of the 'Essex' bath, along with some of the metal brackets, set in water-proof mortar, that once supported it, while some ten or a dozen variously chipped and fragmented larger slabs still lie at the east end of the 'Roman' bath chamber, over the new settling tank installed by the Rev. Pennington-Bickford in the 1920s (Fig. 11). If this cladding was put in its original position by Mr Smith, where might he have 41 Personal communication, 5-6 April 2011. 19 obtained it from? There is a tempting possibility that turns on the accident of the bath's location on Strand Lane, separated only by the lane and a wall from the grounds of Somerset House. In 1776 and the years immediately following, old Somerset House was being demolished piecemeal; rubble from the demolition was either removed from the site, or spread out to level it as necessary, but at the same time re-usable elements were sold off to interested parties. 42 The turn of the east wing came in the autumn of 1776, as is clear from an advertisement that appeared in The Daily Advertiser for 4 October, announcing the immediate sale of all that curious antique Finishing of the Inside of the Royal Galleries in the Flower-Gardens, consisting of noble Doors, Architraves, Bases, and very curious enriched Pilasters and Entablatures, thought to be the most favourable Opportunity for any Builder or others having Occasion for the compleating the Inside of a Chapel, or the repairing any ancient Building. ... Constant Attendance on the Premises, and the Way to them is down Strand-Lane, or through the Gardens. Now, in an article published in the European Magazine and London Review for 1802, describing a visit paid to the east wing of the old House with Chambers and others in 1775, just before demolition work began, the antiquary Joseph Moser recalled having seen, in the far end pavilion of the east wing (thus right up against the wall of Strand Lane), an octagonal room entirely lined in marble, and containing a hot and a cold bath. He commented that the cold bath, in its marble-lined apartment, was 'no doubt supplied from the same spring that was afterwards transferred to the Surry-street Baths, which were, and probably still are, within fifty yards of this spot.'43 Moser was certainly wrong about the spring, but may it not have been marble panels from this conveniently near source that James Smith used to dress up his new bath in 1776 or (more likely) 1778? 42 See S. Thurley, op. cit. n. 3, 76 and 127-36. 43 J. Moser, 'Vestiges, Collected and Recollected. Number II. Somerset House', The European Magazine, and London Review 42 (1802), 89-94, at 92-3. 20 [Fig. 11] A third and final line of inference seeks to draw the first two together by relating them to a possible parallel in another now lost eighteenth-century cold bath, for which, unlike the 'Essex' bath, there are surviving depictions. From around 1709 a considerably more elaborate establishment had operated under the name of Verdier's Hummums and then Hahn's Bagnio, at No. 3 Old Belton Street (subsequently to become Endell Street) near Long Acre.44 By the 1840s, only its cold plunge remained, now romantically renamed Queen Anne's Bath. There are two principal surviving depictions from this period, one a pencil and watercolour sketch by John Wykeham Archer, done in 1844, and the other an engraving published in The Illustrated London News for 15 February 1845 (Figs 1213).45 Taken together they show a rectangular bath about 12 feet long by 6 broad, occupying one corner of a roughly square chamber, surrounded by a stone lip and a metal rail, with steps down in one corner and in the middle of one of the short sides. Over the bath itself, the ceiling rises to a high vault with windows at the very top; to the two free sides, the ceiling is much lower, supported at one corner of the bath by a single plain column. The walls are covered in glazed tiles, some plain and some blue-andwhite Dutch style. Although the illustrations do not show it, the text accompanying the ILN illustration adds that the bath is paved at the bottom in black and white marble, and that the tiles seem to date from the period of William III or Queen Anne. [Figs 12 and 13] 44 The career of Verdier's Hummums and Hahan's Bagnio can be followed in outline through newspaper advertisements: see e.g. The Post Man and the Historical Account, 22-24 November 1709, 18-21 February 1710; The Tatler 3-6 March 1711; The Spectator 18 February and 10 July 1712; The Daily Post 13 December 1727 and 9 November 1724; The Daily Advertiser 26 January 1744 and 11 April 1775. 45 Both can be viewed on British Museum Collections database (search 'Queen Anne's Bath'); Archer's drawing is in BH/FF10/British PVI, the ILN engraving in BH/FF10/London Topography. 21 The comparison with Mr Smith's bath in Surrey Street is clearly an easy one. Remove the high vaulted ceiling, and the remaining elements – marble cladding, Dutch tiles, metal rail – match up very neatly, in an establishment known to have been running from the first decade of the eighteenth century, regularly advertised, and only a matter of a few minutes' walk away from the Strand and Surrey Street. It is probably extravagant and unnecessary to argue that the Belton Street bath was a direct model for Smith; but its description at least shows that the design Smith (probably) adopted was in the air at the time, and thought of as right for a cold bath with pretensions to gentility. Cold bathing The case of the Belton Street bath also brings us back to the question of the context in which Mr Smith decided to open his establishment. What was it that made this seem to him a promising venture for this time and place? It is immediately clear that he was not making any kind of novel move, but rather attempting to cash in on a well established practice. By the 1770s, the fashion for both hot and cold bathing had been established across the country, or perhaps better reestablished, for nearly a century, and there was generous provision for both sorts of immersion in both town and country surroundings.46 Both had, indeed, a longer history, stretching back to medieval times, to bathing at holy wells in the one case and tastes brought back from the East by Crusaders and merchants on the other, but had fallen into relative disfavour in the later sixteenth century, with the arrival of the stricter attitudes to the cult of the saints, miraculous cures, physical indulgence, and exposure of the 46 The most convenient recent survey is Rolfe, op. cit. n. 8; but see also C. Hickman, 'Taking the plunge: 18th-century bath houses and plunge pools', online at http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/bath-houses/bath-houses.htm (consulted 2/1/2013), and among older sources, A.S Foord, Springs, Streams and Spas of London: History and Associations (London: Unwin, 1910), and S. Sunderland, Old London's Spas, Baths, and Wells (London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, 1915). For the politics and ideology of cold bathing, along with much useful detail, see M. Jenner, 'Bathing and Baptism: Sir John Floyer and the politics of cold bathing', in K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker (eds), Refiguring Revolutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 197-216. 22 body that were ushered in by the Reformation.47 Evidence for a revival of both then begins to become apparent with the closing decades of the seventeenth century. A group of 'Turkish merchants' opened a bagnio in Pincock Lane, off Newgate Street, in 1679;48 in 1682 or 1683, Sir William Jennens opened the Duke's (subsequently the King's, then the Queen's) Bagnio in Longacre;49 either one or two more were operating in St James's Street by 1699, with yet others in Chancery Lane, Belton Street and Brownlow Street by 1710.50 Such establishments offered both hot (steam) and cold bathing, often accompanied by the procedure of cupping, designed like hot bathing to stimulate the circulation. They also commonly provided rooms for writing, dining, and various forms of entertainment, including the provision of sexual services. Accordingly, as the century advanced, they increasingly acquired a reputation – 47 Rolfe, Op. cit. n. 8, 5-6. For a particular instance of Puritan opposition, see J.J Keevil, 'The Bagnio in London, 1648-1725', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 7.3 (1952), 250-7, at 252. 48 The phrase 'Turkish merchants' is John Aubrey's (Brief Lives, Sir Henry Blount); it is not clear whether Aubrey meant it in the sense of ethnically Turkish, or as a synonym for 'Turkey merchants', i.e. merchants trading with Turkey. The establishment, known as the Royal Bagnio, is described in Edward Hatton's A New View of London (London: R. Chiswell et al., 1708), vol. ii, 797. The street in which it stood was subsequently known as Bagnio Court, Bagnio Street, Bath Street, and from around 1880, Roman Bath Street (sic). 49 Jennens had acquired a fourteen-year patent on the building of Bagnios in 1679, but had experienced difficulty finding land to build on. The Longacre establishment, noted in contemporary records as 'new-erected' in December 1683, is described by Dr Samuel Haworth in his A Description of the Duke's Bagnio, and of the mineral bath and new spaw thereunto belonging (London: S. Smith, 1683). 50 It was the remains of the Belton Street bagnio, originally known as Verdier's Hummums, then Hahn's Bagnio, that survived into the mid-nineteenth century as 'Queen Anne's Bath'. 23 deserved by some but not all – for being essentially an arm of the sex trade (see Fig. 14).51 [Fig. 14] The virtues of cold bathing, for its part, were already being urged in the 1680s and 90s by the likes of Edward Tyson, who as physical and governor from 1684 onwards introduced cold bath therapy to the Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam), and Charles Leigh, who discussed the benefits of cold springs for bathing as well as drinking in his Phthisiologia Lancastriensis (London: S. Smith, 1694). Perhaps the most influential propagandist was Sir John Floyer of Lichfield, who published An Enquiry into the Right Use and Abuses of the Hot, Cold and Temperate Baths in England in 1697, followed in 1702 by The Ancient Psychrolousia Revived; Or, an essay to prove cold bathing both safe and useful (London: S. Smith). In this second work, which was re-issued in 1706 as Psychrolousia; Or, the history of cold bathing both ancient and modern, with further editions in 1709, 1715, 1722 and 1732, Floyer collaborated with another propagandist for the medicinal benefits of cold bathing, Dr Edward Baynard.52 The message about the health-giving effects of cold bathing, as both remedy for acute diseases and general regimen, was carried forward into the later stages of the century by such works as John Wesley's Primitive Physick; Or, an easy and natural method of 51 Briefly described in Rolfe, op. cit. n. 8, 59-60; more fully and entertainingly in D. Cruickshank, The Secret History of Georgian London (London: Random House, 2009), ch. 10 (with tentative, but erroneous, identification of the Strand Lane bath as the remains of a bagnio on pp. 224-5). 52 Baynard (1641-1717) is listed in the rate books for St Clement Danes as having been resident in Surrey Street in the 1690s. Any direct involvement with the Strand Lane bath seems however to be ruled out by (i) the fact that the rate-books place him at the south end of Surrey Street, and (ii) the evidence, discussed above, which seems to show that the bath-to-be was still the decayed ruin of a cistern, and in Crown ownership, in 1710. 24 curing most diseases, first published in 1747 and still being reissued in the 1790s.53 The warmth and enthusiasm with which this message was received, and which led to the building of scores if not hundreds of cold plunge pools across the country, in both urban and country-house properties, was remarkable, and cannot be put down to concern for health alone. It helped, too, that cold water was simply a pleasant resource on hot days, and that bath houses, especially on country estates, could be turned into displays of architectural and decorative elegance and taste.54 But health remained a consistent strain in both the advertising of cold baths and the reports of their users. The young Dudley Ryder recorded in his diary for 1715 how he was persuaded to try the habit in part by the evidence of an apothecary that cold bathing 'strengthens and enlivens the body, is good against the vapours and impotence, and that the pain is little.'55 The plantation owner and sugar factor John Pinney, who later built himself a private plunge bath in the basement of his Bristol house in 1789-91 (Fig. 15), is quoted as reporting from London, during his apprentice days, that 'I now subscribe to a cold bath and goes in every morning which I finds to be of great service to me.'56 [Fig. 15] 53 See for instance, in the 9th edition of 1761 (London: W. Strahan), pp. xxii (general declaration of the preventative benefits), 40 (cure for a breast cancer), and 119-22 (list of complaints in young children cured by cold bathing). 54 Other factors still could also weigh, as with Floyer, for whom enthusiasm for baptism by immersion was a significant factor: see Jenner, op. cit. n. 46. 55 W. Matthews (ed.), The Diary of Dudley Ryder, 1715-16 (London: Methuen: 1935), 58, quoted by M. Girouard, Life in the English Country House (New Haven: Yale, 1994), 256. 56 Letter to a cousin of 7 October 1760: University of Bristol Library Special Collections, Pinney Letter Book 2 (DM58/Letter Book/2). Pinney was apprenticed to a warehouseman at the time. The reference seems to be to a paying public facility. 25 London provision for cold bathing was evidently good from a relatively early stage. Besides the cold pools attached to the various bagnios already listed, there were the cold bath at Cold Bath Fields, Peerless Pool in the City Road, and the Bath of St Agnes le Clair, Hoxton, all operating well before the mid-point of the century. 57 Smith was thus a relative late-comer to a well populated field, but at a time when the fashion was yet to show significant signs of waning. His advertisements suggest that he was hoping for a genteel clientèle, of a kind that the location of Surrey Street, between the West End and the Inns of Court, might be expected to make available. At the same time, his setting of the rate for a single entry at 1s shows that, with a certain realism, he was not aiming to be too exclusive. A shilling, worth very approximately around £12 or 13 in modern terms, was the price of a cheap theatre ticket,58 and much less than the 5s or more that could be charged for entry to a more elaborate bagnio. Smith's bath would thus have been within reach as an occasional indulgence even for an artisan, even if it will only have been the better off among the middling sort, and their betters, who could have afforded it as regular thing. Conclusion There was evidently still a noticeable demand for public cold baths among a genteel clientèle when Smith opened for business in Surrey Street in the 1770s. But it also seems that this fashion did not have so much longer to run at that social level. Before long, improved domestic provision began to lessen the attraction of outside, paying facilities and the need for them. Cold baths (including that in Strand Lane) continue to be listed in London directories and yearbooks well into the nineteenth century, but catered increasingly for clients on more modest incomes in short-term rented accommodation – like Dickens's David Copperfield, and perhaps the young Dickens himself, as he began to live away from his family. It was probably initially as a response to this shifting and shrinking of the client base that the bath underwent the next 57 See J. Timbs, Curiosities of London (London: Bogue, 1855), 32-3; Foord, op. cit. n. 46, 58- 114; Sunderland, op. cit. n. 46, 38-50. 58 See for instance J. White, London in the Eighteenth Century (London: Bodley Head, 2012), xxi, 307, 322. 26 of its transformations, not this time from fountain-cistern to bath, but from ordinary cold bath into Roman antiquity: the very first appearance of the 'Roman' label comes not in fact in Knight's London, but in a trade directory of 1838.59 But that development, and what flowed from it, are matters for another paper. 59 Robson's London Directory, Street Key and Conveyance List ... for 1838, Eighteenth Edition (London: William Robson & Co, 1838), 314: 'Strand Lane. Scott Chas. Roman Spring Bths.' 27 Captions Fig. 1. The Strand Lane Bath today (photo: author) Fig. 2. Somerset House, Arundel House and the Strand in the 1670s, from Ogilby and Morgan, A Large and Accurate Map of the City of London, 1677 (photo: author) Fig. 3. Surrey Street and surroundings in the 1740s, from J. Rocque, A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1746 (photo: Motco Enterprises Limited) Fig. 4. 33-35 Surrey Street, the 'Roman' bath and the 'Essex' bath, with the positions of the Fox mansion and the East Wing of Old Somerset House (plan by author, based on OS map of 1874) Fig. 5. Plan of the 'Roman' bath, the 'Essex' bath and the vaults behind 33-34 Surrey Street (plan by author, based on plans by Paul Tipple, King's College London) Fig. 6. Vaults behind 33 Surrey Street, c1690 (photo: author) Fig. 7. The 'Essex' bath today (photo: author) Fig. 8. The 'Roman' bath, by J.W. Archer, 1841 (© Trustees of the British Museum) Fig. 9. The bath in 1906, with marble transferred from the 'Essex' bath (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives) Fig. 10. Tiling in the 'Roman' bath, perhaps transferred from the 'Essex' bath (photo: author) Fig. 11. Marble cladding removed from the 'Roman' bath, originally from the 'Essex' bath and (?) Old Somerset House (photo: author) Fig. 12. 'Queen Anne's Bath', Old Belton Street, by J.W. Archer, 1844 (© Trustees of the British Museum) 28 Fig 13. 'Queen Anne's Bath', Old Belton Street, from the Illustrated London News (© Trustees of the British Museum) Fig. 14. A bagnio scene, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1803 (© Trustees of the British Museum) Fig. 15. John Pinney's cold bath, The Georgian House Museum, Bristol (photo: author) 29