Somehow, Ethan and I were both convinced that yesterday was our last day in Bath and that we'd be headed to London this morning. We're not sure how we both got so convinced of this, but we were happy to have another day in Bath. We used it to explore some of the various museums in the city.
We went first to Holburne Museum, which is very close to our hotel. The museum is built in the Sydney Gardens, a favored walking spot of Jane Austen when she lived in Bath, and was later adapted to house the eclectic collection of William Holburne. The collection now includes a collection of British painting, ceramics from Britain and abroad, silver work, including many silver spoons, art and furniture from the Low Countries, and a variety of other pieces collected from around the world.
Ethan, being a harpist, was drawn by this single-action pedal harp from the 1700s. The harp was built by famous French piano and harp maker, Sébastian Érard. The pianoforte behind the harp is one of a handful of Schnatz instruments left and sports bone and ivory keys. Haydn said of Schnatz pianofortes: "...everything is better expressed on a Schnantz."
While a rather prolific collected, William Holburne made a few mistakes over the years. This includes a "Roman" ewer discovered by the Prince of Sicily in the 1800s. A few hints that it was a fake: 1. There was no Prince of Sicily at the time; 2. The most likely candidate for who might have been this so called "prince" was only ten at the time of the "discovery"; and 3. The ewer doesn't look Roman...at all. William got swindled.
Though there was a large collection of silver spoons, one was easily the most interesting. This spoon was a combination of a spoon, a fork, a pen, a toothpick, and an ear-pick. The toothpick and ear-pick portions are lost, but the bowl of the spoon could be removed to create a fork and the finial of the spoon could be removed to reveal the pen. A pretty swanky multitool!
Here is a photo Ethan took and edited today! A view from Holburne Museum, looking down Pulteney Road towards the center of Bath.
We headed from the Holburne into Bath Center and visited St. John the Evangelist, a Roman Catholic church. The church was damaged by a bomb in World War II, as part of the Baedeker Blitz which targeted culturally and historic cities in England. Six people died (although we've seen different numbers) in the church, including the parish priest of the church. The church was rebuilt in the same Gothic style.
We then headed to a store I spotted in my wanderings yesterday, Wool. I have been hoping to find local, British wool while in in the U.K., but have been sadly unable to. Even in Chester, which was a once a center of the British wool trade, I couldn't find any locally sourced yarn. However, Wool had quite a few options from around the U.K. Ethan and I both got some new yarn, and I finally got British wool yarn (it's from Leicester!).
After getting cream tea for our lunch, we decided to head to the museum at the Royal Crescent. Our tickets were half-price, since the BBC was filming a cooking show in the house's kitchen. All the other rooms were accessible, so it was quite a deal!
They had a special exhibit on dollhouses from the 18th and 19th centuries. Sadly, photography was not allowed, but the houses were extremely impressive. They were full miniature Georgian manor houses, full of dolls, furniture, mirrors, paintings, and even china food!
We then explored the house which is meant to represent how it looked when it was occupied by Henry Sandford at the end of the 18th century. The house contains many of his pet interests, including astronomical equipment (Ethan tests out his telescope), scientific inventions, like a machine designed to create a spark, and curiosities from around the world.
This pistol-looking device was used to light lamps in the parlour of the house. It would use the spark from the flint to ignite the wick.
This snake bone necklace is in Sandford's cabinet of curiosities. The other curiosities included things like poison darts, fulgurites, arrowheads and a tomahawk from Northern America, a dog tooth purse, and more.
On the second floor of the house were the ladies quarters. There was a "withdrawing" room for the women to go to after the main meal of the day. It was set up for an after dinner tea and contained a harpsichord as well. While the men stayed in the dining room, drinking and smoking, the women would have a quieter evening over their tea.
The other room on the second floor was the Lady's Bedroom. The room was dominated by features to help the lady get dressed and keep her comfortable while in the many layers of clothes and wigs. The lady of the house would have had a dedicated makeup table, holding tools to curl her hair and a wig stand for more elaborate hair pieces. We also saw a big scratcher, as lice were apparently quite the problem in 18th century Bath.
Upstairs, the only room open to the public was the Gentleman's Bedroom. Henry Sandford was somewhat of an invalid in his later years and spent most of his time in his bedroom. It had a commanding view of the rest of the Royal Crescent. The staffer in the room theorized that Sandford was quite the gossip and probably had his telescope in his room, spying on his neighbors. He liked to write into the local papers about the raucous parties hosted in the house across the Crescent from his.
Down the servant's back staircase, we came to the humbler rooms of the house. We were able to peak into the kitchen, despite the filming, and saw the office where the housekeeper ran the house. Other rooms included the Servants' Hall and the Wine Vault (which was sadly not accessible to the public). Both Ethan and I were surprised by how neat the museum was.
We then headed back to our hotel to try to escape the weather, as it was beginning to turn a bit sour. We had a quite afternoon knitting and watching some tv (and watching the clouds roll in and out of Bath). Now it's off for our last meal in Bath!
Fun Fact #23: In the Servants' Hall there was quite a strange contraption. Apparently, they used a dog-powered wheel to turn the spit over the fire. I thought it was a joke at first, but apparently, the servants would put a dog in the wheel up above the floor and through a series of ropes and pulleys, it turned the spit over the fire. I really hope they gave the dog a fair share of that meat!
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