Page 39 - HG10

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BCD Special Report
Historic Gardens 2010
39
So the question arises, why were many
cold baths set within the landscape rather than
in the house, as in the case of the Georgian
House in Bristol? The most obvious reason is
that the bath was filled directly from a spring
and it would be easier to place the bath near
the source. There was also a belief that the
water should be as cold as possible so that
water straight from a spring would be colder
and therefore more effective than water that
had been piped some distance. It would also
be purer and retain its chemical properties.
However, this is perhaps not the only reason
for the location of the bath within the park.
Virginia Smith describes how the 18th-century
landscape park was a setting for strenuous
activity, with its ‘long informal paths that
rambled around the estate towards newly
built plunge pools, cricket pitches, stables
and carriage rides, fishing lakes, archery
butts, boatsheds, and carefully placed picnic
pavilions’.
4
As today, exercise was certainly
highly advocated, with George Cheyne in his
1743
Essay of Health and Long Life
arguing that
‘a due Degree of Exercise is indispensably
necessary towards Health and Long Life’. He
went on to suggest that ‘Walking is the most
Natural and effectual Exercise’, and that in
particular ‘House Exercises are never to be
allow’d, but when the Weather or some Bodily
Infirmary will not permit going abroad; for Air
contributes mightily to the Benefit of Exercise’.
Therefore, the routine of walking around the
landscape in order to reach the bath could be
viewed as part of the regimen. Some writers
even included walking to and from the cold
bath as part of their recommended technique.
As late as 1839, James Tunstall in his
Popular
Observations on Sea-Bathing, and the General
Use of the Cold Bath
stated that ‘the individual
should walk leisurely to the bathing place’
and then on coming out of the water that ‘he
should then take moderate exercise – half an
hours walk, or an hours ride on horseback
will add much to the benefit experienced’.
As well as the physical exercise achieved
by walking to the bath, the viewing of the
landscape en route could also have a beneficial
effect on the mind. In the case of Stourhead,
taking a bath and viewing the landscape
simultaneously could be considered as having a
direct impact on both the physical and mental
states. In Robert Burton’s influential
Anatomy
of Melancholy
(1626) he suggested that:
… the most pleasant of all outward pastimes
is … to make a petty progress, a merry journey
now and then with some good companions, …
to walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers,
mounts, and arbours, artificiall wildernesses,
green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, rivulets,
fountains and such like pleasant places, …,
brooks, pooles, fishponds, betwixt wood and
water, in a fair meadow, by a river side, …
Likewise, Joseph Addison writing in
The Spectator
in 1712 states that:
Delightful scenes… have a kindly influence
on the body, as well as the mind, and not only
serve to clear and brighten the imagination, but
are able to disperse grief and melancholy, and to
set the animal spirits in pleasing and agreeable
motions.
5
These views suggest that there was a
philosophical basis for an 18th-century belief
Suffolk. Towards the end he included a
description headed; ‘A few lines transcribed
from a Letter to a young lady by a Gentleman
at your Bath’. The letter stated that:
Near the bottom of this is placed the Grotto
or Bath itself, beautified on one Side with
Oziers, Groves and Meadows, on the other
with Gardens, Fruits, Shady Walks and
all the Decorations of a rural Innocence.
The building is delightfully plain and
neat, because the least attempt and artful
in the concept that gardens and beautiful
landscapes had the power to lift the spirits.
5
In the case of Stourhead, where Henry Hoare
took up full time residence in 1741 after a
series of bereavements, including that of his
son, mother and then his wife in 1743, the
garden with its cold bath may well have been
designed to help disperse his personal grief
and melancholy. He described using the bath
in a letter of 1764 during the heat of summer:
‘… a Souse into that delicious Bath and Grot
filld with fresh Magic, is Asiatick Luxury & too
much for Mortals or at least for Subjects,…’.
6
Professor Timothy Mowl has described how
Hoare ‘would bathe here naked with a group
of rollicking visitors whom he had met the
night before at the hotel built for them in the
village, all to the sound of two French horns,
playing in near perfect acoustics’.
7
This is
all considerably more extravagant than the
bracing tonic advocated by Locke and Floyer.
Of course, the landscape surrounding
the pools and baths might not always have
been enjoyed during the actual immersion.
Bath houses often surrounded the pools and
thereby partially enclosed the view or blocking
it completely, as at Greenway, Devon, and
at Bradshaw House in Congleton, Cheshire
(illustrated right) where a summer house was
placed above a plunge pool. However, these
buildings could also provide picturesque
incidents within the landscape, whether rustic,
as at Wynnstay, or classical, as at Corsham
Court in Wiltshire (see first illustration).
The temperature of the water would
also mean that plunge pools and small baths
would no doubt have been the scenes of brief
activity only. Larger pools, however, would
have allowed for swimming, something which
Locke and others were very keen to promote.
In 1834 Mr Haddon wrote that ‘it will be
observed, that as affording opportunity for
gentle exercise, and by the more efficacious
immersion of the whole person in the water,
of the more certain cleansing, re-establishing
and invigorating functions of the skin, the
swimming bath
is mentioned,…’.
8
In this
way cold baths, particularly public ones, can
perhaps be viewed as precursors of the later
fashion for open-air swimming pools and lidos.
Another reason for placing the cold bath
outside in the landscape seems to relate to the
desire to return to a more natural way of life. In
terms of garden design, according to Kenneth
Woodbridge, ‘behind Addison and Pope was
the philosophers’ appeal to a natural order;
Shaftesbury’s ‘rude Rocks, the mossy Caverns,
the irregular wrought Grottos and broken
falls of water with all the horrid Graces of the
Wilderness itself’ were valued ‘as representing
nature more’.
9
Given this argument, the grotto
at Stourhead can be seen to be symbolic of
a natural element within the garden, as can
Richard Woods’ rustic design for the cold
bath at Wardour Castle, Wiltshire, which even
had falling water in the form of a cascade
running beneath the bath (illustrated right).
Private cold baths were not alone in
this relationship to nature. In 1737, John
King, an apothecary, wrote a pamphlet
expounding the virtues of cold bathing, with
particular reference to his spa at Bungay,
The cold bath house at Bradshaw House in Congleton,
Cheshire which has recently been restored. (Photo: Nino
Manci, Congleton Building Preservation Trust)
Marion Mako standing in the Bradshaw House plunge
bath which, miraculously, had survived sufficiently intact
for restoration to be possible. It is lined with carefully tooled
ashlar stone and there are steps down to the plunge pool.
(Photograph: Timothy Mowl)
Richard Woods’ rusticated design for a Cold Bath with cascade
and grove of trees for Wardour Castle, Wiltshire, c1766 (By
courtesy of Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre: 2667/18/21)