1802 ‘The Cow Pock or The Wonderful Effects Of The New Inoculation’. By James Gillray. Caricature depicting the early controversy surrounding Dr. Edward Jenner’s cowpox vaccination program begun in 1796 in England. Recipients of the vaccine developing cow-like appendages. Via British Museum, London, UK. britishmuseum.org (PD-Art)
Craftsmen created containers of precious metals, leather, and silks and decorated them with jewels and engraving. Jane Austen and her contemporaries would have used writing boxes, linen boxes when travelling, boxes to hold their food and drink supplies while traveling by carriage, and decorative boxes to keep letters, ribbons, gloves, hairpins etc. Boxes, Cases, and Necessaires By Suzi Love, History Notes Book 11. books2read.com/suziloveBoxesCases.
How did they celebrate Christmas in Bridgerton and Jane Austen times? Historical information about the traditions of Christmas through the centuries, including the religious aspects, decorations, games, food and plays. History Of Christmases Past has lots of information and images about Christmas through the centuries, including religious aspects, decorations, games, food and plays. Historic images show how some traditions have changed while many have remained the same through the centuries. books2read.com/suziloveHOCPhttp://books2read.com/suziloveHOCP.
“The more I know of the world the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!” Jane Austen ~ Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Cheltenham Spa, England: Pittville Pump Room: Cheltenham is a famous spa town within easy reach of the Cotswolds in in the county of Gloucestershire, England, and was a popular Georgian and Regency spa town where one could rest and recuperate. It became famous as a Spa town following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the most complete Regency town in Britain. The Pittville Pump Room is an elegant Grade 1 listed Regency building and perhaps the most famous example of Regency architecture in Cheltenham, despite the town being filled Regency buildings. The Pittville Pump Room was the last and largest of the spa buildings to be built in Cheltenham.
Location: The Pump Room stands at one end of Pittville Park, about two miles from Cheltenham’s town centre, and is a monument to more than 100 years of fame which Cheltenham enjoyed as a Spa town. The building is set in beautiful parkland and is surrounded on three sides by a grand colonnade of ionic columns opening into the impressive hall with its domed ceiling and original crystal chandeliers. The park has extensive open lawns surrounded by trees and ornate bridges and pathways lead around the lakes where swans and ducks swim.
History: The waters were first discovered in around 1715 on a site now occupied by Cheltenham Ladies’ College. In 1788 George III and Queen Charlotte came to take the waters and it was their visit that set the seal on Cheltenham’s future. After a visit to Cheltenham, a banker named Joseph Pitt commissioned the architect John Forbes to design a pump room that was to act as the centrepiece to his vision of a town to rival Cheltenham – a town he would call Pittville.
The foundation stone was laid on 4 May 1825 and the work completed in 1830. The laying of the foundation was celebrated by the ringing of the bells, firing of cannons, as well as a Masonic Procession which set out from the Masonic Hall in Portland Street. In the evening banquets were held at two of the town’s hotels and grand fireworks display was to be seen at Pittville. The building took five years to complete. Following disagreements between Forbes and the builder, a second architect, John Clement Mead from London, was employed to finish the interior. He designed the elaborate stoves which heated the building. The original official opening on 6th July, 1830 was postponed until 20th July, 1830 because of the death of George IV. A grand public breakfast and ball marked the occasion.
Building the Pump Room: The total cost of the project was over £40,000, and incredible price for that time. Like many bankers of his time, Pitt ran into financial difficulties, the building went out of favour and was sold in 1890 to the Borough of Cheltenham for £5,400, a fraction of the original cost. The building is decorated in Ionic style and the great hail reflects the genius of John Forbes with the spa opening on the north side and the gallery and dome surmounting the hall.
The grand building is 92 feet long by 43 feet, surrounded by a colonnade 13 feet wide the roof of which are supported by fluted Ionic columns 22 feet high. Along the facade stand three figures representing Aesculapius, Hygeia and Hippocrates, originally made by Lucius Gahagan of Bath. In its design, the building combines elements of both Greek and Roman architecture. It was modelled on the temple on Illisus in Athens, the engravings of which appeared in Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens (1762).
The inspiration for the dome probably came from the Panthenon in Rome. A large ballroom was situated on the ground floor where even today visitors can attend music concerts, dances and other events. With a capacity of 400 and remarkable acoustics, it is Cheltenham’s finest concert venue. The spa with an oval pump room to the rear of the building are still there for the visitors to enjoy, available from a marbled pump and counter. A reading room, library and billiard room occupied the first floor.
Fashion History: “Cheltenham will be the summer village of all that is fashionable and all that is dignified; the residence of the royal ” family being a thing quite new so far from the metropolis . Already we hear of nothing but Cheltenham modes — the Cheltenham cap — the Cheltenham bonnets — the Cheltenham buttons — the Cheltenham buckles , in short all the fashions are completely Cheltenhamized throughout Great Britain.” via 1826 Griffith’s New Historical Description of Cheltenham and Its Vicinity.
Second World War: The Pump Room housed British and American army personnel, when dry rot was allowed to creep through the structure unchecked, and only after the war was the full extent of the damage revealed. Plaster, brickwork, timber: nearly everything had been affected. The dome was only held in position by a shell of plaster; the timber had been eaten away by the fungus.
The Duke of Wellington: Public subscriptions carne to the rescue, which were accompanied by Public Works grants and Historic Building Council contributions. A total of £43,250 was raised and by 1960 the building was partially restored to its former glory and reopened in 1960 by the Duke of Wellington. The old card room had been replaced by a new foyer, cloakrooms and second staircase, and heating and new lighting were in stalled.
Recent History: In 2003, the old Victorian wells were leaking and allowing ground water to dilute the natural mineral water so Pittville Pump Room no longer qualified as a spa and the well was shut down. The spa was then repaired and reopened so visitors can taste the only alkaline spa water in the country. The Pump Room’s old maple-strip floor was replaced with a stunning English oak floor, better flooring found for the ball room, and old pipes replaced. Nowadays the Pittville Pump Room is in use most days of the year for private and public functions and is one of Cheltenham’s most popular wedding venues. The venue is also used frequently by orchestras, choirs and chamber groups because it has stunning acoustics.
Cheltenham Spa, England: Pittville Pump Room. #England #Cotswolds #BritishHistory #HistoricTravel https://books2read.com/suziloveROver Share on X1820 ca. Writing Box, English. Rosewood and brass inlaid writing box by William Dobson, The Strand, London. Makers label, gilded candle holders, ink wells. via antiques-atlas.com. Portable boxes for writing materials existed for many centuries but in the last decades of the 18th century socio-economic circumstances in England necessitated the wide use of a portable desk in the form of a box which could be used on a table or on one’s lap. Hence “Lap Desk”.
1826 Bath Beau and His Lady. Photo Editing By Suzi Love. ~ suzilove.com
From: 1826 The English Spy By Robert Cruikshank via Google Books (PD-150)
Young Lady’s Day is Book 4 in the Regency Life Series.
This book depicts the often-frivolous life and fashions of a young lady in the early 1800’s, but also gives a glimpse into the more serious occupations a young lady may undertake. Through historic images, historical information, and funny anecdotes, it shows how a young lady fills her day, where she is permitted to go, and who she is allowed spend time with. These light-hearted looks at the longer Regency years are an easy to read overview of what people did and wore, and where they worked and played. There is plenty of information to interest history buffs, and lots of pictures to help readers and writers of historical fiction visualize the people and places from the last years of the 18th Century until Queen Victoria took the throne.
Bath had two assembly rooms in the lower part of the town but they weren’t large enough for the rapidly increasing population so on the 30th September, 1771, New Rooms were opened on the north east of the Circus, between Bennett and Alfred Streets. These Upper Rooms were designed by the architect, John Wood, and were in a better part of town so they became much more fashionable. They were called the New, or Upper Rooms, to distinguish them from the older Assembly Rooms in the lower part of the town.
They were a set of public rooms purpose-built for the 18th century form of entertainment called an ‘assembly‘, where a large number of people came together to dance, drink tea, play cards, listen to music, or parade around the rooms and talk and flirt. The four rooms are the Ball Room, the Tea Room or Concert Room, the Octagon Room, and a Card Room. The Upper Rooms held two balls a week, a dress ball on Monday evenings and a fancy ball on Thursdays during the Bath season which was from October to early June. These balls were so popular they attracted between 800 and 1,200 guests at a time.
John Wood raised the money for the New Rooms by a “tontine” subscription, which was like a lottery. By April 1769, £14,000 was raised amongst 53 people. When a subscriber died, their shares were added to the holdings of the other subscribers, which meant that the last surviving subscriber inherited everything.
The exterior of the Upper Assembly Room looks typically Georgian, but the interior is very grand and the high ceilings gave good ventilation on crowded ball nights and windows set at a high level prevented outsiders from looking in. Two long rectangular rooms flank the entrance hall and are linked by an octagonal room at the far end to form a U-shape.
The Assembly Rooms are lit by a set of nine chandeliers, made for the building in 1771. Jonathan Collett of London originally provided a set of five chandeliers for the Ball Room when it opened in September 1771. Shortly afterwards the arm of one of the chandeliers fell off – narrowly missing the artist, Thomas Gainsborough, who lived nearby at the time. The Ball Room chandeliers were taken down and a new set was ordered from William Parker of London. Parker had already supplied three chandeliers for the Tea Room. It was agreed that Jonathan Collett should salvage the rejected set of Ball Room chandeliers and make one large chandelier to hang in the Octagon Room. The chandeliers in the three rooms had an average height of eight feet and they were made of Whitefriars crystal from the Whitefriars Glassworks in London and were originally lit by candles. The Ball Room and Tea Room chandeliers each had 40 lights and the Octagon chandelier had 48 lights.
During the 19th century, they were fitted for gas and were later converted to electric light. At the start of the Second World War, the chandeliers were put into storage and escaped destruction when the Assembly Rooms were bombed in 1942. During the extensive refurbishment of the building in 1988-1991, the chandeliers were restored by R. Wilkinson & Sons of London. The Bath Season ran from October to June. As the Season spanned the winter months and many activities took place in the evening it was essential to provide good artificial lighting.
The ball room is the largest of the three main rooms and is over 105 feet long and 42 feet wide and 42 feet high. It runs the whole length of the north side of the building and covers two storeys. The paint is called Ballroom Blue and was first created by David Mlinaric in the 1970s from an original colour swatch. “It is a stroke of luck that the colour sample of blue paint is still attached to the 1770s minute book of the Assembly Rooms Furnishing Committee.” said Lucy Powell, Assistant Archivist at Bath Record Office, “The building was bombed in 1942 so traces of the paint would never have survived otherwise.” From: Fashion Museum, Bath.
On the other side, the tea room is 70 feet long and 27 feet wide and all the rooms had huge chandeliers to give light. In 1777, a card room was added to the Octagonal Room. Before the Card Room was added, the Octagon Room became famous for card playing, the favorite leisure activity from the Georgian Era through to the Regency, as the Upper Rooms were open for card games every day except Sunday. The Octagon Room is dominated by Gainsborough’s portrait of the first Master of Ceremonies at the Upper Rooms, Captain William Wade. Bath’s most famous Master of Ceremonies, Richard “Beau” Nash, never knew this building as he died in 1761.
The tea room was used for refreshments, with tea generally served weak and black or perhaps with arrack and lemon, and on Wednesday nights during the Season concerts were held there. Fashionable visitors to Bath could also hold breakfasts there for their friends.
Many famous people visited the Assembly Rooms in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens both mention the Assembly Rooms in their novels and the diarist, Francis Kilvert, described a reception there in 1873. Subscription concerts were popular and many well-known musicians also visited, the most distinguished being Joseph Haydn, Johann Strauss the Elder, and Franz Liszt.
Today, the Octagon Room, the Tea Room, and the Cloak room Landings all showcase beautiful paintings and prints as the Upper Rooms were given to the National Trust in 1931. You can see paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and John Simmons as well as an Original ticket to the Thirteenth Dress Ball at the Assembly Rooms, 24 January 1803.
Since 1963, the Upper Assembly Rooms have also housed the amazing Fashion Museum. The building is owned by the National Trust and is leased by Bath & North East Somerset Council.
18th-20th Centuries The Assembly Rooms, Bath, U.K. #RegencyEra #Bath #BritishHistory books2read.com/suziloveROver Share on XThe Metropolitan Police, London Before 1829
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