Visit Bath and see the stunning sights of Bridgerton for yourself
From Jane Austen to Bridgerton, Bath’s golden façades have proved a perfect backdrop for glittering balls and fabulous frocks
CLAIRE WEBB - 7 January 2021
With its parade of glittering balls and fabulous frocks, Netflix’s new Regency drama Bridgerton is a feast for the eyes, and many of the scenes were filmed in Bath, which was a fashionable spa resort throughout the Georgian period.
“The heyday of Bath was the middle of the 18th century,” explains local historian Diana White. “People came from all over for the theatre, gambling, dancing and general society. By the time of the Regency, it was much quieter, more middle-class and very respectable. It was cheaper to live in Bath because you didn’t need a coach and horses – you could have a sedan chair or walk.
“Although the middle classes could mix with aristocrats, the rigid etiquette of society was still very much in place and the rules of calling on people were very strict. You had to wait to be invited to meet somebody, so you promenaded up and down the wide parades and hoped to see somebody you knew.”
In the early 1800s, Jane Austen would have been among those promenading. Middle-class with aristocratic relations, she lived in Bath for five years and set her novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey there. Some of her old haunts feature in Bridgerton – and you don’t need a sedan to see them.
See the sights for yourself...
1) Promenade along the Royal Crescent
In Bridgerton’s opening scene, a coach heads down Bath’s grandest street, a curved terrace of honey-hued townhouses where Austen would have walked on Sundays after church. The park it overlooks was a promenade area in her day.
In Bridgerton, the exterior of No.1 Royal Crescent –now a museum – was used as the home of Lady Featherington, who is desperate to bag husbands for her three daughters. Due to reopen in April, it’s decorated and furnished as it might have been in the late 1700s to illustrate what life would have been like above and below stairs.
A stroll along wide pavements flanked by graceful Georgian architecture brings you to the Assembly Rooms, where high society gathered to dance, play cards and sip tea, and where several of Bridgerton’s lavish ballroom scenes were filmed. There were two sets, but only the Upper Rooms – mentioned in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion – survive, complete with 18th-century crystal chandeliers. The Assembly Rooms are owned by the National Trust and house the Bath Fashion Museum (both are currently closed).
Visit Bath’s most-photographed landmark, the shop-lined Pulteney Bridge, then head down Great Pulteney Street to marvel at the imposing façade of the Holburne Museum (used as the entrance to wily Lady Danbury’s mansion in Bridgerton). Jane Austen lived opposite, at 4 Sydney Place. Today the Holburne houses the huge art collection of an 18th-century aristocrat, and an exhibition on Georgian artist Thomas Lawrence opens in February.
4) Take the waters at Britain’s only natural thermal spa…
As well as its social enticements, the attraction of Bath was its mineral-rich thermal springs, first harnessed by the Romans. In the Georgian era, there were three baths, but the better off tended to take the waters at the slightly more salubrious Cross Bath. Even so, everybody bathed together and there was no disinfectant. The Cross Bath is now part of Thermae Bath Spa, a stone-and-glass complex with a lovely rooftop pool.
Visitors also drank the city’s curative waters at the Pump Room.
These days you can still sip a glass of steaming spa water from the ornate old fountain – as Jane
Austen’s uncle used to – and see the 300-year-old Tompion clock and a statue of Beau Nash, who made the city fashionable in the 1700s. Originally an open space for promenading, the Pump Room is now a restaurant and a popular spot for afternoon tea.
See the sights for yourself...
1) Promenade along the Royal Crescent
2) Take a turn around the Assembly Rooms
3) Admire Georgian art at the Holburne Museum
4) Take the waters at Britain’s only natural thermal spa…
5) ...or at the Pump Room
Diana White is the author of Jane Austen: the Life and Times of the Woman Behind the Books. For more information, go to visitbath.co.uk