As beautiful as Bath is, it is more interesting underground. This is where the ruins, the gods, and the waters are: the steps to the temple of Sulis Minerva near the Pump Room, the Victorian tunnels, and, in the eerie plant room below the Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel, the water from the ancient springs, waiting to be purified before it flows into the Gainsborough’s private baths.
The three springs of Bath – The Cross, the Hetling and the King’s – formed when rainwater fell on the hills 10,000 years ago, descended 2500 metres and rose through the limestone to the city. They produce one million litres a day, at a temperature of 45-46 degrees, and are filled with minerals: sodium; calcium; sulphate; chloride; magnesium; iron. They have, over the centuries, been assumed to cure anything from infertility to melancholia.
That is the whole point of Bath; everything comes back to the waters.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth the magic water cured the leprous Prince Bladud, a prince of the Celts, who approached the springs – they were mud then – with his similarly leprous pigs.
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