Story and Photos by Monique Burns.
Feature Image: Bath’s Royal Crescent, once one of Regency England’s most fashionable addresses, is now the site of a splendid house museum and the five-star Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa (Photo: Pam Brophy)
Films like “Pride and Prejudice,” featuring the wealthy but aloof Mr. Darcy and the poor but brave Elizabeth Bennet, have charmed moviegoers for decades. But few know the real Jane Austen, the writer whose insights into the manners and mores of Regency England inspired six of the world’s best–loved novels, including Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion and, of course, Pride and Prejudice. Reading Austen’s works is always a treat. But the best (and most adventurous) way to commune with Jane Austen and her unforgettable characters is to follow in their lively footsteps.
Less than two hours west of London, discover Bath, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where 18th–century English nobility and gentry flocked during the social season to see and be seen. Jane Austen moved there after her father retired from the ministry, quitting his Steventon parish church and 200–acre farm in Hampshire County. Jane and family lived in Bath for five years, from 1801 until 1806, and she set two novels there: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
Today, you can still visit the Royal Crescent, Assembly Rooms, Pump Room and other locales that Austen and her characters frequented. But, if you really want to immerse yourself in Austen’s world, plan your trip for September’s Jane Austen Festival.
The world’s largest gathering of Austen enthusiasts, the 10–day Jane Austen Festival draws 3,500 people annually for more than 80 events, including picnics and walking tours. The kickoff event, the Grand Regency Costumed Promenade, with more than 900 participants parading through town dressed in Regency–era costumes, has earned a spot in the book of Guinness World Records. The festival’s highlight? Two Regency Costumed Balls, featuring authentic Regency–era music and dance, and open to anyone for the price of a ticket.
Getting to London from the U.S. is a breeze. British Airways, the national flag carrier, flies direct to London from 26 U.S. gateways, including New York–JFK, Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C. in the east; Austin, Dallas–Ft. Worth, Houston and Phoenix in the southwest, and Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco in the west.
Arriving well–rested at London’s Heathrow Airport, take the Heathrow Express train 20 minutes to Paddington Station. Or, if you fly into Gatwick, it’s just a 30–minute ride on the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station. From there, take the Tube, or underground, several stops to Paddington Station.
From Paddington Station, catch a Great Western Railway train for the 1½–hour journey west to Bath. To save money, go online before leaving home and purchase a first or second–class Britrail train pass, and a London Visitor Oyster Card for unlimited rides on the Tube, buses, trains and Thames River boats.
From Bath Spa station, it’s a 15–minute walk or five–minute taxi ride to the heart of town, with harmonious classical architecture in the warm, honey–colored limestone known as Bath stone. In the 1700s, John Wood the Elder and his son, John Wood the Younger, designed many of Bath’s most notable buildings. Reflecting Bath’s sense of its social importance, the classical style paid tribute to the Romans, who, in 60 AD, built a spa town here around mineral–infused hot springs. Known as Aquae Sulis, it was dedicated to the Celtic goddess of wells, waterways and healing, the wise Sulis Minerva.
Not surprisingly, Bath has a long tradition of hospitality. Immerse yourself in the city’s baronial lifestyle at five–star Macdonald Bath Spa Hotel, one of a chain of nearly 40 four and five–star country–house hotels in England, Scotland and on Spain’s Costa del Sol. A 15–minute walk from the town center, the hotel has 131 elegant rooms and suites, some with Georgian–style four–poster beds and all with marble baths, set amid seven acres of landscaped gardens.
The hotel’s Vital Health & Wellbeing offerings include an indoor swimming pool, an outdoor hydrotherapy pool and a gym with the latest fitness equipment. There’s also a full–service spa offering fragrant ELEMIS treatments, from facials and deep–tissue massages to manicures and pedicures.
Food and beverage offerings are equally upscale. Take afternoon tea with finger sandwiches, scones and clotted cream in the elegant but cozy Drawing Room with floor–to–ceiling windows and velvet–upholstered armchairs and sofas. The Colonnade Bar is the perfect spot for light fare and a cocktail. Consider locally distilled Bath Gin, infused with bitter orange, kaffir lime leaf and English coriander, and featuring a winking Jane Austen on the label.
Do save your appetite for dinner at Vellore where contemporary British fare, including venison fillet with onion ash and sticky date pudding with caramel sauce and vanilla–bean ice cream, are served on the canopied outdoor terrace or in the spacious dining room, once an elegant ballroom.
In the heart of town, choose the four–star Francis Hotel. Composed of seven adjoining Regency–style townhouses; it’s on Queen Square, a Palladian–style residential terrace built by John Wood the Elder between 1728 and 1736. Steps from the hotel, at No. 13 Queen Square, Jane Austen and her mother stayed in May and June 1799. “We are exceedingly pleased,” wrote the author to her sister Cassandra. “The rooms are quite as large as expected…with dirty quilts and everything comfortable.”
Today, The Francis Hotel prides itself on spotless linens, modern amenities, and 98 stylish rooms blending 18th century–style furnishings with bright contemporary colors. Boho Marché, the hotel restaurant, serves English seasonal foods with a French flair. Try the twice–baked cheese soufflé or potted mackerel for starters, then proceed to the oh-so English Chef’s Battered Fish of the Day with mushy peas and chips or the velly-velly vegetarian Slow–Roasted Cauliflower Steak with sweet potato mousseline.
In Emily’s Tea Room, a long, sunny gallery with plush flowered wing chairs, gilt–framed portraits and ornate mirrors, enjoy classic afternoon tea as well as cocktails inspired by characters from the popular Netflix series, “Bridgerton,” set in Regency England.
The Francis Hotel faces Queen Square, a leafy little park with an obelisk dedicated in 1738 to Frederick, Prince of Wales, by Beau Nash, the Swansea gambler who became 18th–century Bath’s unofficial Master of Ceremonies. Just northeast is the Jane Austen Centre at No. 40 Gay Street. It’s down the street from No. 25, the townhouse where Jane Austen lived shortly before leaving Bath in 1806.
Outside the Jane Austen Centre, you’re greeted by a statue of Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet, in a royal–blue coat and bonnet, and live costumed characters, including her bewhiskered father, Mr. Bennet. Inside, watch a brief film about Austen’s life, then proceed to the well–organized exhibits.
For Austen aficionados, the shop offers everything from socks bearing the author’s likeness to tea towels, books, and jewelry inscribed with Austen quotes. Upstairs, in the Regency Tea Room, enjoy “Afternoon Tea with Mr. Darcy,” including finger sandwiches, cakes, and scones with Dorset clotted cream. Savor teas from local supplier Gillards of Bath, or celebrate with Prosecco or Champagne.
Follow the Gravel Walk, northwest of Queen Square, and you’ll soon reach the Royal Crescent, a residential terrace of 30 columned townhouses facing a broad semicircular green and, beyond, flower–filled Royal Victoria Park. Built by John Wood the Younger from 1767 to 1774, the Royal Crescent was one of Regency England’s most fashionable addresses.
Today, get a sense of that bygone era by visiting the splendid house museum at No.1 Royal Crescent. Carefully curated 18th–century furnishings adorn the mansion from The Lady’s Bedroom, with its flowered canopy bed and gilt–edged portraits of great ladies with towering bouffants, to the Housekeeper’s Room, with attractive but noticeably plain wood furnishings, and from the Kitchen, where pots and pans adorn the walls, to the stately Dining Room, with gilded family portraits and a long burnished–wood table set with highly collectible Chamberlain Worcester china. That’s the same china ordered by the likes of Admiral Lord Nelson who, sadly, died at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar before he could show his set off to guests.
Continue to No.16 and immerse yourself in Bath’s bygone elegance, albeit with ultramodern accoutrements, at the five–star Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa. Rooms and suites are posh with traditional period furnishings. For a splurge, check into The Garden Villa with its own private walled garden. Here, too, yet another fine Bath restaurant serves Modern British cuisine like succulent organic lamb from Whaddon Grove Farm in nearby Wiltshire County and baked egg custard tart with Yorkshire rhubarb.
Called Montagu’s Mews, the hotel restaurant is named after Elizabeth Montagu, who spent the Bath social season at the very same No. 16, once her townhouse. So–called “Queen of the Blues,” the 18th–century writer and women’s advocate led the Blue Stockings Society, presiding over brilliant artistic salons in both London and Bath.
On Sundays, Bath’s 18th–century residents, dressed in their Regency finery, paraded along the Royal Crescent. Jane Austen often walked there after church at St. Swithin’s Walcot, where her parents married in 1764 and where her father lies buried. An inveterate walker, Jane almost certainly strolled the famous Gravel Walk. In her 1817 novel, Persuasion, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, now a prosperous naval officer, are reunited in Bath after an eight–year separation.
Strolling the Gravel Walk, wrote Austen, Anne and the captain “exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure every thing, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement.”
Several blocks east of the Royal Crescent, you’ll find the Assembly Rooms, designed by John Wood the Younger in 1769. Here Jane Austen and other visitors met to dance, hear concerts, play cards, gossip and, most important of all, find suitable mates. Adorning the palatial 100–foot–long ballroom are five original crystal chandeliers made by the famous Whitefriars Glassworks of London. In the Assembly Rooms, Catherine Morland, heroine of Northanger Abbey, meets her romantic match in Henry Tilney. But it’s in the Octagonal Room that Persuasion’s Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth first come face–to–face after their long separation.
Visitors to the Assembly Rooms can also tour the Tea Room and the Card Room. Alas, at the time of this writing, the Fashion Museum, long housed in the basement, is closed while relocating to another downtown address. Once it reopens, stop in to see Regency dress, along with 100,000 other items from the 16th century onward, collected by Doris Langley Moore, a respected Lord Byron scholar who penned the provocative 1928 self–help book, The Technique of the Love Affair.
From the Assembly Rooms, backtrack south to 18th–century Pulteney Bridge. With shops on both sides, it’s reminiscent of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. Across the River Avon is Great Pulteney Street. In Persuasion, an enamoured Anne Elliot anxiously awaits a glimpse of Captain Wentworth there.
Today, at No. 15, an inn and restaurant at that very same Great Pulteney Street address, you’ll find 36 cozy one–of–a–kind rooms (including kid–friendly family rooms) nestled in several Regency–era townhouses and a separate coach house. The inn also has a small courtyard garden, a car park, and a spa offering soaks in a copper bathtub that’s big enough for two as well as facials, body scrubs and massages.
Another popular draw: The hotel restaurant, serving bistro–style dishes with fresh local ingredients. Think: Reuben sandwiches with home–cured corned beef, cauliflower risotto with local Somerset pecorino, and traditional Bath chaps, a kind of slow–cooked pork chop with kohlrabi remoulade.
Nearby is No. 4 Sydney Place. The first of Austen’s four Bath residences, it’s now Bath Boutique Stays, with luxury apartments named after Jane Austen characters. Just beyond are Sydney Gardens, where Austen often strolled and gathered with other Bath habitués to enjoy public breakfasts. Visit the park’s Holburne Museum, Bath’s first public museum, showcasing over 6,500 items, from German Meissen porcelain to Gainsborough portraits.
Virtually every corner of Bath has some connection to Jane Austen. But perhaps the most famous site is the Pump Room. Above the Roman Baths, and steps from Bath Abbey, where Edgar, first King of England, was crowned in 973, it’s where fashionable 18th–century visitors came to sip the sacred mineral–rich waters. Adorned with crystal chandeliers and gilt–framed portraits, the Pump Room is now an elegant setting for moderately priced Morning Bakery, Brunch and Afternoon Tea served to the strains of classical piano music, or the Pump Room Trio’s violin, cello and piano.
At Morning Bakery, tuck into cheddar–and–chive scones and your choice of cakes, perhaps carrot cake with sticky toffee sauce. At Brunch, sample two poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce on—what else?—genuine English muffins paired with delicacies like Scottish smoked salmon, Wiltshire ham, or crushed avocado with seared cherry tomatoes.
Afternoon Tea has three sittings, so there’s no excuse for missing savories like cottage pie with leek mash or rarebit with local ale chutney. Feast on typically English finger sandwiches like whipped cream cheese–and–cucumber or deviled egg–and–mustard cress. But don’t miss the fresh–baked pastries, or the homemade buttermilk scones with West Country clotted cream and jam. Enjoy your meal with coffee, tea, Champagne or Prosecco.
Afterward, visit the Roman Baths with mossy–green waters surrounded by stone columns and ornate carvings. You can no longer do as the Romans do and bathe in those sacred springs. But, steps away, at the Thermae Bath Spa, you can languish in the Cross Bath’s equally sacred waters. Or do as Jane Austen did, and take a long, thoughtful draught of mineral water from The King’s Spring, the Pump Room’s venerable fish–adorned fountain.
IF YOU GO: The following links, in order of appearance, may be helpful: Bath, Jane Austen Festival, Great Western Railway, London Visitor Oyster Card, Macdonald Bath Spa Hotel, Francis Hotel, Jane Austen Centre, No.1 Royal Crescent, Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa, Assembly Rooms, No. 15, Holburne Museum, Pump Room, Roman Baths, Thermae Bath Spa.
For flights to London, visit British Airways. Great Britain’s national flag carrier flies direct to London from 26 U.S. gateways. For more on Bath, log on to www.visitbath.co.uk and www.visitbritain.com.
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