The Bath Assembly Rooms in Jane Austen’s novels

The Upper Rooms, Bath

By the time of the Regency, Bath was no longer the fashionable resort that it had once been. The rise in popularity of sea bathing had sent the ton flocking to towns such as Weymouth and Brighton, leaving Bath to the invalids and those who could not afford to keep up a fashionable lifestyle in London.

Bath society was served by two sets of Assembly Rooms, the Lower Rooms and the New or Upper Rooms.

Jane Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1805, and she used her personal experience to bring the city to life in her books. Two of her novels are partly set in Bath: Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.

Jane Austen's home in Bath (1801-1805)

Persuasion

The Assembly Rooms play a small but important part in Persuasion; they are the backdrop for a pivotal scene in the story. The heroine, Anne Elliot, is eager to visit the Rooms in the hope of meeting Captain Wentworth, but she is prevented by her father’s snobbish attitude.

The theatre or the rooms…were not fashionable enough for the Elliots, whose evening amusements were solely in the elegant stupidity of private parties, in which they were getting more and more engaged.1

A concert in the Upper Rooms

However, Sir Walter and his elder daughter Elizabeth are eager to attend a concert at the Rooms in the company of their exalted relative, Lady Dalrymple.

It was a concert for the benefit of a person patronised by Lady Dalrymple. Of course they must attend.1

The Tea Room, Assembly Rooms, Bath,
where concerts were held every Wednesday

Although Jane Austen does not specifically say that the concert was being held in the Upper Rooms, as opposed to the Lower Rooms, it is clear that it was, because she mentions a room there, the Octagon Room, by name:

Sir Walter, his two daughters, and Mrs Clay, were the earliest of all their party at the rooms in the evening; and as Lady Dalrymple must be waited for, they took their station by one of the fires in the Octagon Room.1

The Octagon Room, Assembly Rooms, Bath

The Concert Room referred to was the Tea Room, which was mainly used for concerts and refreshments. It is at this concert that Anne Elliot begins to hope that her affection for Captain Wentworth is returned when that gentleman storms off in a jealous rage.

Northanger Abbey 

In Northanger Abbey, the heroine, Catherine Morland, often visits both the Upper and Lower Rooms.

A crowd at the Upper Rooms

The Ballroom, Assembly Rooms, Bath

Catherine eagerly anticipates “the important evening” which was “to usher her into the Upper Rooms”. Unfortunately

...Mrs Allen was so long in dressing that they did not enter the ballroom till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr Allen, he repaired directly to the card-room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves.2

Mrs Allen proceeds to spend the whole evening bemoaning her lack of acquaintances in Bath which prevent her from being able to supply Catherine with a partner. However, Catherine’s vanity is satisfied by overhearing two gentlemen pronouncing her “to be a pretty girl”.2

An important introduction at the Lower Rooms

Catherine is more successful when she visits the Lower Rooms:

They made their appearance in the Lower Rooms; and here fortune was more favourable to our heroine. The master of the ceremonies introduced to her a very gentlemanlike young man as a partner; his name was Tilney.2

Catherine’s conversation with Mr Tilney reveals that she visited the Upper Rooms on Monday, the theatre on Tuesday and a concert on Wednesday. The programme of events at the Upper Rooms indicates that it was a dress ball that she attended at the Upper Rooms and that the concert was also held there.

The entertainments at the Upper Rooms
from A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places
by J Feltham (1815)

What Catherine wore

Mr Tilney teases Catherine about what she will write in her journal and gives us a description of what Catherine wore to the Lower Rooms:

‘Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings—plain black shoes—appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense.’2

Ball dress
from La Belle Assemblée (1807)

The Master of Ceremonies

Mr Tilney proceeds to tell Catherine what he would like her to write in her journal, and in so doing, mentions by name the Master of Ceremonies:

‘I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr King; had a great deal of conversation with him—seems a most extraordinary genius—hope I may know more of him.’2

James King, Master of Ceremonies
at the Lower Rooms until 1805
from The New Bath Guide (1799)

At first glance, it seems as if Jane Austen has got her facts wrong. When Northanger Abbey was published in 1818, Mr King had long since ceased to be the Master of Ceremonies at the Lower Rooms; he was promoted to the Upper Rooms in 1805. However, Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey in the late 1790s and first submitted it for publication in 1803, at which time Mr King was still presiding over the Lower Rooms.

Dancing partners

A conversation between Isabella Thorpe and Catherine’s brother James brings up the question of whether it is necessary to change dancing partners at the Upper Rooms. It is, of course, laughable that Jane Austen puts the words of propriety into the flirtatious Isabella’s mouth:

‘How can you be so teasing; only conceive, my dear Catherine, what your brother wants me to do. He wants me to dance with him again, though I tell him that it is a most improper thing, and entirely against the rules. It would make us the talk of the place, if we were not to change partners.’
‘Upon my honour,’ said James, ‘in these public assemblies, it is as often done as not.’2

Entrance to the Assembly Rooms, Bath

Read more about the Assembly Rooms on my blog:

• The Upper Assembly Rooms, Bath

• Balls at the Upper Assembly Rooms

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

Notes
(1) Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818).
(2) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1818).

Sources used include:
Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1818)
Crutwell, R (pub), The New Bath Guide (1799)
Feltham, John, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places (1815)
Garnett, Oliver and Dunlop, Patricia, The Assembly Rooms, Bath, the Authorised Guide (c2011)

Fashionable entertainment in Regency Weymouth

The Royal Hotel on Weymouth seafront (2012)

Weymouth in fashion

Visitors started flocking to Weymouth in the second half of the 18th century when the seaside came into fashion. The sheltered bay offered safe sea bathing and attracted Royal visitors – first the Duke of Gloucester and then his brother George III. The town grew to accommodate the needs of the wealthy tourists and was able to offer fashionable entertainments including assembly rooms, libraries and a theatre.

 

You can read about sea bathing in Regency Weymouth here. 

 

You can read about George III's visits to Weymouth here.

The public rooms

The Assembly Rooms were housed in Stacie’s Hotel, which was later known as the Royal. It was an imposing building with double bow windows facing the sea, in the centre of Gloucester Row, close to Gloucester Lodge. The main room could hold 100 couples for dancing and there were rooms available for card playing and tea drinking.

Plaque on the Royal Hotel,
  Weymouth seafront (2012)

Balls were held twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. As in Bath, the Master of Ceremonies laid down a set of rules for the Rooms that had to be adhered to. This role was held by Mr Rodber from 1784 to at least 1815. The rules and orders for balls he established were as follows:

1. That Gentlemen are not to appear in the rooms, either on Tuesday or Friday evenings, in boots; nor Ladies in riding-habits.

2. That the ball shall begin as soon as possible after seven o’clock, and finish precisely at eleven.

3. That Ladies and Gentlemen who dance down a country dance, shall not quit their place till the dance is finished, unless they do not mean to dance any more that night.

4. That no Lady or Gentleman can be permitted to dance in coloured gloves.

5. That after a Lady has called a dance, and danced it down, her place in the next dance is at the bottom.

6. That no tea-table be carried into the card-room.

7. That Gentlemen will be pleased to leave their swords at the door.

8. That no dogs be admitted.

A dance from La Belle Assemblée (May 1820)

How much did it cost to attend balls in Regency Weymouth?

In 1815, a single ticket during three seasons cost a guinea (£1 1s or 21s) and a three person ticket cost £2 2s. This is rather more than the 14 shillings per person that it cost for a ticket to a season of balls at the Bath Assembly Rooms in the same year, but it did include two balls a week rather than one, the balls may have run all year and there is no mention of an extra charge for tea which effectively doubled the price of a ball in Bath.

A guinea equates to approximately £60.70 in 2010 using the Retail Price Index (RPI) or £705 if adjusted for average earnings. This suggests that the balls at the Assembly Rooms were only for the wealthy. For more information on this, please look at my article: How much did a ticket to a Regency ball really cost?

Gentlemen and ladies could alternatively pay just to walk the rooms at a cost of 10s 6d and 5s respectively. This compares favourably with Bath for gentlemen who would have had to pay twice as much for a subscription to the card and reading rooms in the Assembly Rooms; the cost for ladies is identical to that in Bath.

Harvey’s library

Harvey's library, Weymouth Esplanade (2022)

Harvey’s library was on the centre of the Esplanade and boasted a collection of over 8,000 volumes as well as a large and comfortable room for examining newspapers and periodicals.

There was an elegantly-furnished card room over the library. The subscription rate in 1815 was 10s 6d per quarter, equivalent to £30.30 using the RPI or £352 using average earnings.

The Post Office was based here, sending out mail to London at 10.30am every day except Saturday and receiving mail from London by 3pm every day except Monday.

Harvey's library, Weymouth seafront (2012)

Wood’s library

Wood’s library was also on the Esplanade and could offer for hire a wide range of musical instruments in addition to books. The subscription rate here was 2s 6d per week – equivalent to £7.22 using the RPI or a rather expensive £83.90 using average earnings.

The theatre

The theatre had been refurbished by James Hamilton and was under the management of Mr Hughes. It seated an audience of up to 400 persons, with performances on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

The baths

As an alternative to sea bathing, there was a hot salt water bath in the centre of town, for those who chose not to venture into the sea. In 1815, this would have cost 3s 6d before 6pm and 4s after 6pm. The equivalent costs today would be £10.10 and £11.60 using the RPI or £117 and £134 using average earnings. Sedan chairs were always available to take the clients home after being dipped.

This advertisement for the baths appeared in the 1857 guide to Weymouth as a Watering Place. Although it is long after the Regency, it provides an interesting insight into what might have been available: 

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Sources used include:
Chedzoy, Alan, Seaside Sovereign - King George III at Weymouth (2003, The Dovecote Press, Wimborne)
Editor of the Picture of London, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places (1815)
Delamotte, Peter, The Weymouth Guide (1785, Weymouth)
Groves, E, The Weymouth and Melcombe Regis New Guide (E Groves, 1835, Weymouth)
Hibbert, Christopher, George III (1998, Viking, Great Britain)
Simpkin & Marshall, Weymouth as a Watering Place (Simpkin & Marshall, 1857, London)
 
MeasuringWorth website - for calculators of relative worth
Photographs © RegencyHistory.net

How much did a ticket to a Regency ball really cost?

Top: The Ballroom, Assembly Rooms, Bath (2012)
Bottom left: Top left: Assembly Rooms, Bath (2012)
Bottom right: Dancers from La Belle Assemblée (1820)

*This post was written in March 2012 and updated in September 2016 with new relative values based on 2015 data.*

While researching my posts about the Bath Assembly Rooms, I found a list of subscription rates in a contemporary guide. (1) I discovered that a season’s entry to the 28 dress balls being held in the 1815 season cost 14 shillings per person, a gentleman’s annual subscription to the reading and card room cost a guinea and a lady’s subscription to the card assemblies cost five shillings. Tea on ball nights cost an additional sixpence.

But what was a guinea? Was it worth more than 14 shillings? Was sixpence really the trivial sum that I assumed it to be? And how much would this be in today’s money? 

Regency money

The main denominations were pounds, shillings and pence. 

There were 20 shillings in a pound. Pounds were denoted by “£” or sometimes by “l”, standing for libra—a pound weight in Latin; shillings were denoted by “s”.

There were 12 pence or “d” in a shilling. The “d” stood for denarius, a small Roman coin.

A crown was worth five shillings; a half-crown, two shillings and sixpence.

The value of a guinea varied according to the price of gold, but by 1815, its value was fixed at 21 shillings. 

This tells us that a gentleman’s annual subscription to the card room cost half as much again as a single person’s entry to all the dress balls for the season, but gives no indication of what amount this was in today’s money.

What would it cost today?

 

This is not a straightforward question to answer as there are many factors involved in translating prices from one time period to another. Not only prices, but income levels have changed. What seems like a small monetary value to us could represent a huge proportion of someone’s income back in 1815.

I have found the MeasuringWorth website (2) very helpful in understanding the relative values of commodities and incomes from the Regency period compared with today. They have researched alternative ways of comparing relative worth between different time periods and have used historic data to create calculators to enable us to compare the cost of something in 1815 with today’s prices.

The cost-of-living index

When Regency prices or incomes are quoted in books, a second figure is often included representing the amount 'in today’s prices'. This comparative amount is typically based on the retail price index (RPI). The RPI, or cost-of-living index, compares the cost of purchases of a typical household in 1815 with the cost in 2015. It is possible to get an idea of what something would have cost in today’s money by using this measure.

The RPI gives us the following values:

Subscription to the dress balls: 14s = £46.76, equivalent to a mere £1.67 per ball!

Gentleman’s annual subscription to the card and reading room: 1 guinea = £70.14.

Subscription to the card assemblies: 5s = £16.70.

Tea: 6d = £1.67.

Though interesting, these results are not as helpful as they could be, because they do not give any indication as to whether these sums were within a person’s means or not.

What was the real cost?

To include a measure of affordability, it is necessary to look at relative earnings. This is important because average wages today are higher than in 1815. For example, a teacher in 1815 would have earned about £51. (3) Using the RPI calculator, this would be £3,410 in 2015. However, the relative salary of a teacher in the UK today is much higher than in 1815, with a starting salary in excess of £22,000 (4). 

The MeasuringWorth website uses average earnings to calculate an alternative relative value. Compared to an average 2015 salary, the relative values are now: 

Subscription to the dress balls: 14s = £511, equivalent to £18.25 per ball.

Gentleman’s annual subscription to the card and reading room: 1 guinea = £767.80.

Subscription to the card assemblies: 5s = £182.80.

Tea: 6d = £18.28.

So how much did a Regency ball really cost?

A subscription to the dress balls at the Upper Rooms in Bath in 1815 cost 14 shillings, equivalent to 6 pence per ball. This represents about £1.67 in today’s money. However, I believe that the average earnings indicator can give us the best idea of the real cost, and this measure gives us a price of about £18 per ball. This seems surprisingly inexpensive, though the price is doubled when you include the cost of tea.

However, two things should be borne in mind. Firstly, this price was only available if you took out a subscription for the season; a ticket to a single ball for a non-subscriber cost five shillings, equivalent to a massive £182.80! The second is that the relative earnings calculator is based on average earnings. How affordable these things really were would have depended on an individual’s personal circumstances.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Notes
(1) From Feltham, John, Editor of the Picture of London, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-bathing Places (1815).
(2) All calculations from MeasuringWorth.com.
(3) Salary details from Jeffrey G. Williamson, "The Structure of Pay in Britain, 1710-1911", Research in Economic History, 7 (1982), 1-54.
(4) Teacher salaries from Department of Education website.

Sources used include:
Feltham, John, Editor of the Picture of London, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-bathing Places (1815)
Williamson, Jeffrey G, "The Structure of Pay in Britain, 1710-1911", Research in Economic History, 7 (1982)

MeasuringWorth website - for calculators of relative worth
The Old Bailey website - for details of coinage
Photographs © RegencyHistory

Balls at the Upper Assembly Rooms, Bath

The entrance to the Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

Dress balls and fancy balls

In Georgian times, the Bath season ran from October to early June. The Upper Rooms held two balls a week in season, a dress ball on Monday nights and a fancy ball on Thursday nights. In 1815, subscribers were told they could expect a total of 28 balls on each subscription. However, an advert for the 1811-12 season shows the number of balls as only 24, which suggests that the number being offered varied from year to year.

Subscriptions

In 1815, a subscription to either the dress balls or the fancy balls cost 14 shillings per person. Alternatively, you could purchase a subscription to the dress balls for 26 shillings which included two tickets for ladies, which were transferable. Non-subscribers, on the other hand, were charged the sum of 5 shillings for a single ball.

The balls

According to the 1815 guide, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places, the Monday dress ball consisted exclusively of country dances whilst the fancy ball included two cotillions, one before and one after tea. In the height of the season, the 1815 guide suggests that there were generally 12 sets.

The ball room, the Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

Mr King’s rules stated:

That the Dress and Fancy Balls shall begin as soon as possible after seven o’clock, and conclude precisely at eleven, even in the middle of a dance.1

The musical band in the rooms was to consist of twelve performers including the harp, tabor and pipe.

It seems likely that there was some variation over time as the The Assembly Rooms, Bath, the Authorised Guide gives a slightly different account. It says that the dress balls began at 6 o’clock rather than 7, and that there were only eleven musicians, who played from the first floor gallery. The ball consisted of two hours of minuets, followed by an hour of more lively country dances until tea at 9 o’clock. More country dances followed until the evening’s entertainment finished, promptly at 11 o’clock.

Refreshments

On ball nights, everyone was required to pay an extra sixpence on entrance for tea. Supper was served in the tea room.

The tea room at the Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

Jane Austen at the Upper Rooms

While living in Bath in May 1801, Jane Austen writes of a visit to the Upper Rooms:

By nine o’clock my uncle, aunt and I entered the rooms and linked Miss Winstone on to us. Before tea it was rather a dull affair; but then the before tea did not last long, for there was only one dance, danced by four couple. Think of four couple, surrounded by about an hundred people, dancing in the Upper Rooms at Bath! After tea we cheered up; the breaking up of private parties sent some scores more to the ball, and tho’ it was shockingly and inhumanly thin for this place, there were people enough to have made five or six very pretty Basingstoke assemblies.2

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Notes
1. Feltham, John, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-bathing Places for 1813 (1813).
2. Austen, Jane, My dear Cassandra, letters to her sister selected and introduced by Penelope Hughes-Hallett (Collins & Brown Ltd, 1990, London).

Sources used include:
Austen, Jane and Hughes-Hallett, Penelope, My dear Cassandra, Selected letters of Jane Austen (Collins and Brown Ltd, 1990)
Editor of the Picture of London, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places (1815)
Cecil, David, A Portrait of Jane Austen (Constable, 1978)
Garnett, Oliver and Dunlop, Patricia, The Assembly Rooms, Bath, the Authorised Guide (c2011, Opalprint)

Photographs © RegencyHistory

The Upper Assembly Rooms, Bath

The entrance to the Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

The Upper Rooms, Bath

The New Rooms opened in Bath on 30 September 1771 with a combined dance and concert, known as a ridotto. Bath already had two assembly rooms at this date, but these were in the lower part of the town and were proving inadequate for the rapidly increasing population. The New Rooms were built to the north east of the Circus, between Bennett and Alfred Streets, in the fashionable, newly-built, upper town. The New Rooms became known as the Upper Rooms, superior in both facilities and location, whilst the old rooms were henceforth referred to as the Lower Rooms.

The building of the Upper Rooms

The architect, John Wood, designed the Upper Rooms and raised the money for their erection by a “tontine” subscription. This was not a regular investment, but contained an element of lottery: as subscribers died, their shares were added to the holdings of the other subscribers, with the last surviving subscriber inheriting the whole. By April 1769, around £14,000 had been raised from 53 individuals and the foundation stone was duly laid on 26 May 1769. The interior decoration was finished in 1771, ready for the grand opening.

The rooms

The design of the Upper Rooms is essentially U-shaped, with two long rectangular rooms flanking the entrance hall and linked by an octagonal room at the far end. The ball room is over 100 feet long and nearly 45 feet wide, whilst the tea room on the other side is about 70 feet long by 27 feet wide. Beyond the octagonal room is a purpose-built card room which was added in 1777. The Rooms were lit by huge cut-glass chandeliers.

One of the chandeliers in the tea room
Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

The Master of Ceremonies

Bath’s most famous Master of Ceremonies was Richard “Beau” Nash who ruled over the city from 1706 until his death in 1761. Nash’s rules for polite behaviour transformed Bath into the most fashionable watering place in Georgian England.

At the time that the New Rooms were built, Captain Wade was Master of Ceremonies, but after his resignation in 1777, the role was fought over by two rival contestants and it was determined to create two Masters of Ceremonies, one over the Upper Rooms and one over the Lower Rooms.

Mr Tyson was Master of Ceremonies at the Upper Rooms from 1785 until 1805 when Mr King was promoted to the role from that of presiding over the Lower Rooms, further confirming the superiority of the Upper Rooms.

The Master of Ceremonies liked to be informed of new arrivals in Bath. He therefore requested

…that they will, on their arrival cause their names, with their places of abode, to be inserted in the book kept at the Pump Room for that purpose, which will afford him such information as will enable him to comply with his own wishes, and the expectations of the public.1

The entertainments

The entertainments at the Upper Rooms
from A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places (1815)

The ball room

The Bath season ran from October to early June, during which the Upper Rooms held two balls a week, a dress ball on Monday evenings and a fancy ball on Thursdays. 

 

Read more about balls at the Upper Rooms here.

The tea room

The tea room, The Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

The tea room was mainly used for refreshments and concerts. On ball nights, each person was charged an extra sixpence for tea. Public breakfasts could also be ordered by fashionable visitors for their friends here. The favourite drink was tea, served weak and black but sometimes with arrack and lemon.

Subscription concerts were held on Wednesday evenings during the season and many leading musicians visited the rooms including Haydn.

The octagon

Gambling was very popular in Georgian society and the Upper Rooms catered for this by providing rooms which were open for card games every day except Sunday. Card playing took place in the octagonal room, and later in the card room.

Mr King had particular rules about card playing in the Rooms. These included a rule forbidding anyone from playing with cards left by someone else and another banning hazard and other unlawful games.

In 1815, gentlemen could purchase a subscription to the card and reading room for the sum of 1 guinea for the year or ½ guinea for two months. The ladies’ subscription for the card assemblies was priced at 5 shillings.

The ball room, the Upper Rooms, Bath (2012)

The Upper Rooms today

The Upper Rooms were given to the National Trust in 1931 and have been home to the Fashion Museum since 1963.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Note
1. Feltham, John, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-bathing Places for 1813 (1813).

Sources used include:
Feltham, John, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places for 1813 (1813)
Feltham, John, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places (1815)
Garnett, Oliver and Dunlop, Patricia, The Assembly Rooms, Bath, the Authorised Guide (c2011)

Photographs © regencyhistory.net