Fascinating new archaeology tours are set to take visitors behind the scenes of the largest excavations at the Roman Baths for more than 30 years.
The 20-minute tours will run at regular intervals throughout February and will give visitors access to the excavations taking place in vaults that are not normally open to the public. The work is taking place as part of the Archway Project, which will create a new Clore Learning Centre for the Roman Baths.
The tours are free with admission to the Roman Baths, however visitors can give a voluntary donation to the Roman Baths Foundation to support the excavations.
Highlights of the new tours include:
- A Roman exercise area, which will form part of a new Investigation Zone set to open in 2019 in which school children will be able to carry out research in and amongst Roman remains.
- An in-situ stylobate – a colonnaded walkway which contains a Roman doorway leading through to a possible row of shops, where traders might have sold memorabilia to visitors, oil for the sauna, or food and drink.
- The other side of the South wall of the Great Bath, behind the curved alcoves where people relaxed.
- A Roman culvert, and pipe work and drains from Georgian and Victorian times
- A wall where you can see archaeological deposits dating back 2,000 years.
Councillor Paul Myers, Cabinet Member for Economic and Community Regeneration, said, “The tours are a great chance for visitors to go behind the scenes, meet archaeologists and possibly watch them at work discovering even more about the history of our treasured Roman Baths. It’s also great for any Bath and North East Somerset residents with a Discovery Card because these archaeology tours are free with the card.”
Although modest in scale, this will be the most significant archaeological work to have taken place on the site since Sir Barry Cunliffe’s investigations in the 1970s and 1980s. A small programme of archaeological works in September 2017 unearthed three Roman coins and a Roman nail cleaner with a rare peacock design.
For more information please visit romanbaths.co.uk.
