Postcards from Bath #4

Postcards from Bath #4: Bath Abbey Tower tour

It seemed worth paying the ticket price to climb the 212 steps up the tower of Bath Abbey, if only for the wonderful views across the city. There were about a dozen folk in the tour group, operating in very confined spaces, so I'm afraid my photos were taken quickly, just with my phone. They have rather drunken angles as I tried to avoid people's heads, not to mention striving to hold on to my phone and not drop it from the roof as I held it out beyond the stonework! It was a most enjoyable tour, led by a couple of young lasses who were both knowledgeable and enthusiastic. 

The image above shows the view looking north up the High Street towards St Michael's Church on Broad Street. The ornate building bottom right is the Guildhall, built for grand civic functions, with a magnificent banqueting room. Beyond it and contiguous with the building is the Victoria Art Gallery. 

Below is the view east across the river, with Orange Grove (now a roundabout!), the Parade Gardens, the  River Avon and the Bath Rugby Union ground. 

Looking north-west (below), you can see the Pump Room, with its domed roof, adjoining the restored Roman Baths (on the right, the oblong green pool with a collonnade) - where, 2000 years ago, the Romans channelled the natural, mineral-rich, hot springs into a huge lead-lined reservoir to feed the Baths' pools. It was a place for relaxation, swimming, business and entertainment. Now priced at around £20 entrance fee, it was entertainment I decided I could live without! 

The Tower tour route involved navigating steep, narrow, spiral flights of stairs and edging along a narrow walkway at the side of the nave roof. 

It was something of a relief to enter the belfry in the tower, a large square room with the bell ropes looped up in the ceiling. 

The room is adorned with plaques and boards detailing the commemorative peals that the bells have rung. Bell ringing is an arcane pastime with a specialist language. (I have tried it! - and I had a great uncle whose main claim to fame was that he died in the belfry of Newark Parish Church while ringing!)  The board below details 'A Peal of 5021 Grandsire Caters', 'cater' meaning it was rung on nine or ten bells, to a particular pattern (Grandsire being a change-ringing method), which took 3 hours 21 minutes to complete. 

Also in this room you could dimly see the working mechanism of the church clock, made by W Potts and Sons (a famous clock maker) in Leeds in 1888. 

We crept along narrow passageways into areas where you could see the bells, the barrelled shapes of the upper side of the fan-vaulted roof and into the space behind the clock face. (Photo below by kind permission of my friend, who lingered until everyone else had left the space, in order to get a good image of the clock.)