Stephanie Burgis - Magical Books for Ages Ten to Fifteen

The Baths

Years and years ago, well before Kat ever swaggered into my life, I was working on a book set in 1814 Vienna, with a British heroine. I was living in Leeds, England, at the time, and one of my co-workers told me about the fabulous Fashion Museum in Bath, where I could see actual British gowns from 1814. Of course this was the perfect excuse for me to finally visit Bath, which I'd been wanting to do since...well, pretty much forever, because SO MANY Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer novels are set there!

My husband and I had a wonderful day trip to Bath. We did visit the Fashion Museum, but I also insisted that we make a pilgrimage to the Jane Austen Centre, a townhouse in Gay Street where she lived at one point, and which is now one of my favorite museums in the world. I had a fabulous time, taking notes on everything because it was the right historical era for my then-heroine, even though it was the wrong city and country for my current book. We even visited the Assembly Rooms where so many Austen and Heyer heroines danced (or languished, not-dancing).

At the end of the day, though, it was finally my husband's turn to pick a tourist spot. He wanted to go to the Roman Baths, because he remembered liking them on a school trip when he was a kid. I shrugged, put away my notebook, shut off the note-taking, researching part of my brain, and came along for the ride...

...and fell head-over-heels into fascinated love. I was enthralled. Visiting the Baths was an amazing, intense experience. Walking around, as the steam rose out of the naturally hot water with its distinct aroma, my head spun and I could absolutely understand why the Baths (or rather, the natural hot springs that supply them) have been seen as possessing mystical, magical properties by so many different groups over the last couple of thousand years.

The Celts thought the hot springs were sacred to the goddess Sul; the Romans agreed but combined Sul with their own goddess Minerva. They built a temple to Sulis Minerva there, made offerings into the water and asked the goddess for favors for themselves or curses against their enemies. (If you go to the Roman Baths museum now, you can see some of the preserved messages that the Roman dropped into the water for the goddess to read, along with the amazing Head of Minerva pictured below.) The British, even in 1803, believed that the waters had naturally health-giving properties and that bathing in them (and drinking the truly disgusting water) might cure even terrible illnesses.

I thought: someone should set a fantasy story here.

Then we went home, and I went back to work on my Vienna novel.

Fast-forward several years, to 2008, and I'd just started my second Kat adventure. I wanted Kat to go somewhere really cool, somewhere ripe for exciting magic, somewhere...oh, yes. Really, there was no question in my head. Kat had to go to Bath, and the magic had to be centered around the Roman Baths! (Or: the King's and Queen's Baths, as they were known at that point.)

Oh, how I wished I had taken notes, all those years ago. Finally, well after finishing the first draft of the novel, we went back to Bath, with a videocamera and a big notebook. Patrick videoed everything for me as I took copious notes...and then halfway through the building, we realized: the layout of the Roman Baths that you can see now, walking around (which is the layout of the Baths in Roman times) is completely different from the layout in 1803. Argh!

Cue much tearing of hair and a LOT of research. I spent the next couple of years scouring books and archives to try to find the right layout and descriptions for the Baths in 1803 - a harder task than you might imagine, since there was a ton of rebuilding done on them in the late 18th century and again in the 19th century. There was some cursing, there were lots of moments of frustration...but it was all worth it to be able to play with that amazing, magical setting.

I hope you guys enjoy the results!

The City

Bath was a famous spa-town, collecting visitors with serious health problems as well as becoming a hub for fashionable society in the late eighteenth century. Every morning, fashionable Bath society promenaded around the Pump Room (just beside the baths), where they gossiped, flirted, and, if they had any concerns about their health, "took the waters" - i.e., drank the truly disgusting water of the hot springs, drawn up from the Pump.

As an author who cares as much about historical accuracy as possible (while making space for magic in the mix!), of course I knew I had to take one for the team. I was going to have to drink the water myself and see what it really tasted like.

I visited Bath again on a rainy day, steeling myself for what lay ahead. The building on the left includes the entrance to the Roman Baths museum; the building on the right is the Pump Room. Keep an eye on the colonnade of pillars at the end of the square - they'll show up in Kat Book 2, when she ends up hiding behind one of the pillars!

Here's the Pump (overlooking the King's Bath, where most of the book's magic takes place). It looks so pretty and innocent, doesn't it? Sigh...

Oh my LORD was it disgusting. But I drank it, I really did, because I needed to know how Kat would react to it when Angeline forces a glass into her hand. (In a word: BLEAGH!) Please note: I was HEAVILY pregnant in this picture! I hope my son will forgive me for drinking this while he was inside me, absorbing every taste. But hey, it's supposed to be health-giving...right???

You can find out more about the Baths and their history (and see some pretty amazing pieces from their collection, including that extraordinary sculpted head of Sulis Minerva that was pictured above, from the original Roman temple) at the Roman Baths website.

If you want to read more novels set in Bath, I'd recommend Jane Austen's Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, and Georgette Heyer's Black Sheep. Also, the movie version of Persuasion (the version with Amanda Root) was filmed in Bath with an eye to historical accuracy, so if you watch the film (one of my favorites!) you can see pretty much what it would have looked like while Kat was there!