The Roman heritage of Sydney Gardens
Written by Emily Whitehead, student from Bath Spa University’s Journalism & Publishing BA course, as part of her third year project.
The evidence of Roman occupation of Bath is all around us. Hotels, lagers and rowing clubs bear the name of the goddess worshipped at the ancient Roman temple, Sulis Minerva, and a large part of tourists’ fascination with Bath comes from its ancient past. The Roman Baths, which receive over a million visitors per year, are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Bath’s hidden Roman history.
Sydney Gardens is a bubble of nature nestled between Bath’s imposing Georgian buildings and busy roads. It is best known as a display of Georgian and Victorian wealth and power, and features a mock Roman temple, a railway built by Brunel, and the Holburne Museum, which was built in the 1790s. Wealthy Georgians would visit the Gardens both to be seen by others and to visit the Gardens’ attractions, such as the labyrinth and the menagerie. On the surface, it represents an age of innovation, industry, and empire — but its history goes much deeper than that.
When the first groundworks and excavations started when the Gardens were first constructed in 1793, the builders made a grisly discovery. Buried four feet deep in the ground that would soon become Sydney Gardens was a tombstone engraved with the words;
TO THE MEMORY OF GAIUS CALPVRNIUS RECEPTUS, PRIEST OF SUL, AGED 75
SET UP BY HIS WIFE, CALPURNIA TRIFOSA
The builders had disturbed an ancient graveyard.
The Romans invaded Britain in AD43, and used the hot springs in what is now Bath to build a religious temple, which they called Aquae Sulis. However, the Romans weren’t the first to settle in Bath and they had to mix with the members of the Dobunni, the Celtic tribe who already lived in what is now North Somerset. To compromise between the Dobunni and the Romans the goddess worshipped at Aquae Sulis was called Sulis Minerva to combine both Roman and Celtic elements. The waters of the spa were known for their healing properties even before the arrival of the Romans, and Aquae Sulis was a major landmark and attraction of Roman Britain.
As a priest of Sul, Gaius Calpunius Receptus would have worked in what is now the Roman Baths. We don’t know what his exact duties might have been, but it is possible that he listened to prayers of visitors to the baths and tended the fire in the temple of Sulis Minerva, which was not allowed to go out. Some worshippers would carve curses onto stone tablets and throw them into the water, where the spirit of the goddess lived, so he may have helped with this too.
By the fourth century, the Receptus’s place of work started to fall into decline as the Roman Empire started to collapse. A 10th century Anglo-Saxon poem, ‘The Ruin’, describes the baths falling into disrepair as “the cities crumbled, all those who would repair it laid in the earth.” The grave of Gaius Calpurnius Receptus lay undisturbed for over a millennia — until the builders of Sydney Gardens laid their foundations.
Though the gardens had fallen into disrepair over the last hundred years, they are now undergoing a revival. The exact resting place of the ancient priest isn’t marked, but when walking through the shade of the gardens’ Peace Oak and enjoying the respite from the noise and bustle of the city, it isn’t hard to cast your mind back a thousand years and think about the man who dedicated his life to a goddess of healing, and wonder what other Roman secrets Bath might have to offer.
Written by Emily Whitehead
Any views expressed in this article are the views of the author and are not necessarily representative of the Sydney Gardens Project team. Although every effort has been made to ensure that all articles are factually correct at the time of writing, we trust that our authors have thoroughly researched their articles.
