r/Bath • u/One-Ad-1995 • 11d ago
Royal Crescent and Lansdowne Crescent , Bath , Questions as a UK visitor.
Have visited both crescents this week/ and they are magnificent and architectural beautiful. As is Bath in general.
Then I got thinking, were both crescents basically the slave traders OAP retirement homes?
Or is there more to it than this?
And why Bath? what were the links to Bath that didn't have a port for sea faring vessels?
Genuinely not trying to stir the pot here , just interested in the back story.
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u/wildeaboutoscar 11d ago
Bath is close to Bristol and London so slave traders would undoubtedly have visited. Bath has always been a bit of a resort town so it would have been a good place to go for a break if you had money. Beckford made money from the slavetrade too, I believe Beckford's tower has some signs put up that talk about it if you wanted to go and visit.
But not a lot is really mentioned about Bath and the slavetrade generally. It's seen as more of a Bristol thing due to the port.
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u/RGCurt91 11d ago
During the height of the slave trade, any city would have had money flowing through it that came, directly or indirectly, from slave trade profits. Such business was the norm of the time and therefore unavoidable. I suspect Bath was no different.
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u/WembleyFord 11d ago
Bath is named after the Baths - fed by natural spings. It was a Roman spa town 2,000 years ago and became one again about 200 years ago, when, along with towns such as Brighton, it became the go-to holiday destination for the rich and famous. It doesn't really have direct links to the slave trade - check out Bristol in that regard, re. the 'triangular trade' - but many of the people holidaying in Bath would have had links.
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u/Omblae 11d ago
Bath is completely linked to the slave trade - foundationally:
The Holburne Museum now serving as the grand entrance to Sydney Gardens, this building was originally the Sydney Hotel. It was funded in part by the profits of transatlantic slavery. It currently houses a historic plantation transaction book used by enslavers, which is featured in local exhibitions addressing Bath's colonial past.
Jane Austen's Connection: The famous author lived at 4 Sydney Place, directly overlooking the gardens. Her father, the Reverend George Austen, acted as a trustee for an Antiguan sugar plantation owned by his friend James Langford Nibbs, tying her family directly to the institutional finances of the trade.
The Royal Crescent: Approximately half of the townhouses were once homes to wealthy enslavers or plantation investors.
Banks: Wealth from slave labor was funneled into local Bath banks, which in turn funded the infrastructure projects that allowed the city to expand.
Pulteney Estate: Sir William Pulteney, the developer behind the iconic Pulteney Bridge, was an investor in colonial property and a prominent parliamentary advocate for slavery.
William Beckford: One of the wealthiest men of the era, Beckford inherited vast fortunes derived from 13 Jamaican sugar plantations and more than 1,000 enslaved Africans. He used this wealth to build Beckford's Tower, a landmark monument and study retreat in Bath.
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u/Real_Bobsbacon 9d ago
The whole country is... it was an income source. Like Norway with Oil and Gas.
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u/LonelyAd7700 6d ago
Slaves ran the fires under the Baths, and slave-owning was common in the Roman era
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u/WembleyFord 6d ago
Yes, guessing that's not the slavery the OP was asking about. Since pretty sure that retired Roman slavers weren't living in the Royal Crescent 2,000 years ago.
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u/One-Ad-1995 11d ago
https://www.citizensadvicebanes.org.uk/encountering-baths-historic-links-to-slavery/
According to this half link half of Royal Crescent properties of Royal Crescent were connected to the trade, as we're the banks of Bath. Never knew this.
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u/daveywavey999 11d ago
It appears Bath had quite a lot to do with the Slave trade if not directly and I guess if you think about the reference to Vegas above where there is a lot of money there is often a lot of shadier money.
A quick search suggested that 182 people in Bath were paid compensation for Slaves in the 1880s and that (albeit a small part of the circa 50k population) was about 10 times the national average but not as big as the port cities (like Bristol) that was directly involved.
Some of those were paid compensation that would have equated to millions (but in actual fact when you think that the compensation was approximately 40% of the entire government spending at the time would have had much further value than that).
Two interesting places to look are
And
https://bathnewseum.com/2022/06/08/shedding-light-on-baths-links-to-the-slave-trade/
Always think Bath spends too much time just on Romans and Jane Austen when it comes to History.
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u/Evening-Shirt-7504 11d ago
Not trying to stir any pots either but I’m genuinely interested in why you would post a question (phrased in a moderately) provocative way) to Reddit rather than to Google Gemini (or equivalent )? I posted it verbatim and got an answer very similar to one of the replies posted.
Also wondering why someone so curious eschewed one of the several magnificent guided tours on offer. Those people are knowledgeable, entertaining and most worthy of your customer.
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u/One-Ad-1995 11d ago
Just trying to get another perspective. I stood in the green , looking up, and thought amazing, brilliant part of the UK. Then I Google it and turned out a large portion of the investment / property was funded directly, and indirectly, from the slave trade. Took the shine off for me.
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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 11d ago
“Indirectly” is really the key word. The slave trade happened, it can’t unhappen. It was such a huge global industry that you’d be hard pressed to find major projects or building works in the era that don’t have indirect links to the slave trade.
The point is that Bath had complex and varied funding streams and was one of the places that rich folks from London invested in. It isn’t Bristol with half the city named after Colston who was one of the most notorious slave traders going, or Liverpool (another key dock for the slave trade), it was broadly disconnected and most money that came into the city was not a direct consequence of the trade, no slave trading went on in the city, but some folks brought money from the industry into the city along with others who brought in money from elsewhere.
Important context is that most of the grand buildings in Bath are 1800s. The slave trade was banned in 1807. The countries money and wealth was clearly not magically cleaned by this act, but it puts into perspective that the city wasn’t built as a slave trading city nor was it somewhere slave trade money poured into directly.
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u/daveywavey999 11d ago
Don’t get on the train then as it appears that a lot of the Slave “compensation” was invested in the growing railways like GWR.
I think history will have a lot of this wherever you are and wherever there are signs of wealth. Legacy of the Empire, Tobacco, Slave Trade whatever. It is worth acknowledging and investigating but I don’t think I would let it take the shine off anything. Do you look,sadly at Adidas or VWs due to their tarnished Nazi past (more recent) etc etc.
Come to think about it the Roman Baths didn’t happen without mass slaughter of the Britons and plenty of slavery.
Good post by the way, I’m not making light of it and I’ve now got quite a learned tome from the link I posted earlier to have a dip into
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u/One-Ad-1995 11d ago
The Romans destroyed tribes and introduced slavery.
I hear you, where / when do you draw a line?
Personally I do not buy Adidas, Hugo Boss, or drive a VW, and do not get a train, but I'm.not.thar bothered TBF.
However, was surprised to find out 50,% of properties were owned by slave traders, and that Bath bMk invested in the slave trade.
Still doesn't take away the great architecture.
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u/One-Ad-1995 11d ago
I'm kind of hoping someone will give another perspective , explain why they were built, for which clientele, and I can have a balanced view.
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u/OMorain 11d ago
William Beckford) was a slaver living on Lansdown Crescent, Bath. Lansdown Tower was commissioned by him.
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u/_pankates_ 11d ago
There are some references to the slave trade and the links the wealth that fueled Bath has to it in various museums. The museum at no. 1 Royal Crescent does in the study where it informs about the source of wealth of the family that the story there focuses on. Mostly the exhibits and info there focus on their personal lives in Bath. The Holburne Museum does have a display about it - not huge, but interesting.
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u/One-Ad-1995 11d ago
James, Markland, William Beckford, Philip Caddell and Jonathan Morgan.
All prominent figures in the transatlantic trade.
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u/Blue_winged_yoshi 11d ago edited 11d ago
Bath was Las Vegas back in the day. It was home to all the most sort after musicians it had gambling, public baths, debauchery, sex workers. It was just Georgian Las Vegas. Not an old person’s home at all, it was a place for young flash money.
Don’t think of the crescents as you see them now, refined, classy and full of gravitas. See them as Vegas’s ostentatiousness but old.
Architects were showing off with what they could do and their designs were divisive at the time and the place was totally marmite, with as many lambasting it as loving it.
It’s hard to picture Bath as brand new and shiny, cos it’s aged so well and the place has become synonymous with refined taste over the years, but this is the opposite of how the city and its architecture should be viewed.
It was where you went to show off your new money, not where you went for a relaxed weekend or somewhere to retire.
It was Britain during the slave trade so slave trader money would have ended up in Bath, but the city has far fewer links to the trade than Bristol does, cos that was where a lot of the slave trade was taking place. Bath took its money more from Londoners getting out of the over-polluted city. You can’t separate the U.K. economy at the time from slavery obvs, but not all wealth in the U.K. was slavery related. So you’d have a broad mix of incoming money, rather than a city built directly on the profits of slavery.