Victoria Harman > Roman Baths > Sacred Spring at Bath
The Sacred Spring feeds water into the Roman Baths. The spring's waters rise at a rate that can be as high as one million liters a day and are usually at around fourty-six degrees Celsius. The spring is located inside the courtyard of the Temple of Sulis Minerva. The spring was enclosed by a barrier of stone lined with lead, based on top of a foundation of oak and mud. It was later enclosed in a structure with decorative columns and statues. Offerings were thrown into the spring.
The presence of the Sacred Spring made the structure of the baths in Bath different from those in other territories of the Roman Empire. Usually, the only warm part of a day at the baths would be in the Tepidarium and the Caldarium, which would be followed by a frigid bath in the Frigidarium. However, since the Spring was naturally hot, Bath's complex included a large heated pool, rather than this sequence of smaller warm and cold pools. The reason this method was not implemented in other baths was because the warm water was much more expensive to produce.
There was an overflow in which the hot spring water that was not used for bathing was flowed into the great Roman drain. Then, the water was carried to the River Avon, some hundred meters away. The flowing water went through a sluice that could be controlled so that the Sacred Spring could be fully drained, creating access to the reservoir for maintenance.
This same draining system is used today.
Fig. ? The Roman drain
image courtesy of: http://www.romanbaths.co.uk
This usage of a natural spring for health benefits is reminiscent of the more recent appreciation of fashionable springs used for therapeutic purposes. These springs mainly produced mineral water and were believed to help those with serious diseases. For example, Franklin Roosevelt believed that these sorts of warm springs would improve his polio condition. Starting in 1924, he frequently visited Warm Springs, Georgia and eventually bought a home and died there. His celebrity certainly popularized the spot for the seriously ill. Regardless, it is said that starting in 1823, when the first resort was built in Warm Springs by David Rose, people "flocked to the waters for health". Many more fashionable resorts were originally founded on the basis of local springs, such as The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, WV and The Gideon Putnam Resort and Spa in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Sources: RomanBaths.co.uk, The Greenbrier, Gideon Putnam Resort and Spa, Warm Springs VM
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