Literary Walk: Bath's Lost Pleasure Gardens

From gravel walks and groves to fireworks and fun...

This literary walk - part of a series running over the course of the summer - is based on the years of research that led to No Swinging on Sundays, a brilliant book filled to the brim with Bath's rich history. The walk will be led by author Kirsten Elliott, who not only sheds new light on life in Georgian Bath and dispels many long held myths and misconceptions, but shows how much fun the history of this heritage-rich city can be.

This walk begins in the bookshop with a cup of coffee (or tea), a slice of cake, and a leisurely peruse. The walk will leave promptly at 11, so be sure to get here for around 10:30 if you'd like to grab something to eat and drink.

Bath's pleasure gardens are gone beyond recall. Yet in their heyday they were as central to the city's social life as its assembly rooms, pump room or parades. They were where well-heeled visitors came to party. With lamplit groves and labyrinths, grottoes and supper boxes, and a seemingly never-ending round of concerts and circus acts, balloon ascents and firework displays, they were loud and lively. Against all the odds, the grandest of them all, Sydney Gardens, opened in 1795, survives as a public park. Shorn of its attractions and cut in two by a railway line, it takes imagination to conjure up the shades of revellers treading its gravelled paths in search of excitement and exercise - though no swinging was tolerated on Sundays. In 2018, Heritage Lottery Funding was secured for the restoration of these historic gardens. To mark their reinvention as a pleasure garden for 21st-century Bath, this book is devoted to their extraordinary story.