Thermae Bath Spa is a combination of the historic spa

Spa

The term spa is associated with water treatment which is also known as balneotherapy. Spa towns or spa resorts typically offer various health treatments. The belief in the curative powers of mineral waters goes back to prehistoric times. Such practices have been popular worldwide, but are...

 and a contemporary building in the city of Bath, England, and re-opened in 2006. Bath and North East Somerset

Bath and North East Somerset

Bath and North East Somerset is a unitary authority that was created on 1 April 1996 following the abolition of the County of Avon. It is part of the Ceremonial county of Somerset...

 council own the buildings, and, as decreed in a Royal Charter of 1590, are the guardians of the spring waters, which are the only naturally hot, mineral-rich waters in the UK. The Spa is operated by Thermae Development Company.

The main spa building, the New Royal Bath, was designed by Grimshaw Architects

Grimshaw Architects

Grimshaw Architects is an architectural firm based in London. Founded in 1980 by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, the firm was one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture...

 and is constructed in Bath stone, enclosed by a glass envelope. It has two natural thermal baths, an open-air rooftop pool and an indoor pool, a large steam room with four circular glass pods and 20 spa treatment rooms, including the 18th century Hot Bath. The stand alone Cross Bath is a grade 1 listed Georgian building containing one open-air thermal bath.

History

One of the city's main attractions has long been its famous hot spa water, fed by the area's hot spring

Hot spring

A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...

s. The Bath springs are the warmest geothermal springs found in the UK. These natural geothermal

Geothermal heating

Geothermal heating is the direct use of geothermal energy for heating applications. Humans have taken advantage of geothermal heat this way since the Paleolithic era. Approximately seventy countries made direct use of a total of 270 PJ of geothermal heating in 2004...

 mineral spring

Mineral spring

Mineral springs are naturally occurring springs that produce water containing minerals, or other dissolved substances, that alter its taste or give it a purported therapeutic value...

s fed into the Roman Baths complex, which was responsible for the prominence of Bath in the Roman period

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

, as well as for the later development of Bath as the country's leading eighteenth and early nineteenth century health resort. In the middle of the 20th century, the city's swimming pool sourced its water directly from the King's Spring through one of three pipelines beneath the River Avon

River Avon, Bristol

The River Avon is an English river in the south west of the country. To distinguish it from a number of other River Avons in Britain, this river is often also known as the Lower Avon or Bristol Avon...

. However, the old municipal hot pools were closed in 1978 after the discovery of an infectious organism in one stratum of the aquifer

Aquifer

An aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology...

. After that date, bathing was prohibited.

Development

With the approach of the Millennium

Millennium

A millennium is a period of time equal to one thousand years —from the Latin phrase , thousand, and , year—often but not necessarily related numerically to a particular dating system....

, money from the National Lottery

National Lottery (United Kingdom)

The National Lottery is the state-franchised national lottery in the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man.It is operated by Camelot Group, to whom the licence was granted in 1994, 2001 and again in 2007. The lottery is regulated by the National Lottery Commission, and was established by the then...

-funded Millennium Commission

Millennium Commission

The Millennium Commission in the United Kingdom was set up to aid communities at the end of the 2nd millennium and the start of the 3rd millennium. It used funding raised through the UK National Lottery....

 was made available towards a major project to reopen a safe commercial

Commerce

While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...

 spa once more, supplemented by funds from subscribers and from the local authority.

Originally planned to open in 2002, and despite a formal opening with the aid of the "Three Tenors" in 2003, the project ran seriously behind schedule and over budget as a result of a variety of legal disputes with contractor

General contractor

A general contractor is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and communication of information to involved parties throughout the course of a building project.-Description:...

s: the project's budgeted costs spiralled from an estimated £13 million in September 1996 to a final cost of £45 million.

Many Bath residents blamed the spa for an increase of council tax

Council tax

Council Tax is the system of local taxation used in England, Scotland and Wales to part fund the services provided by local government in each country. It was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, as a successor to the unpopular Community Charge...

.

Present day

Thermae Bath Spa eventually opened to the public on 7 August 2006, ending a 28-year period during which the waters remained unavailable for bathing.

The spa is largely sited in a new 'Glass Cube' building by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw

Nicholas Grimshaw

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, CBE is a prominent English architect, particularly noted for several modernist buildings, including London's Waterloo International railway station and the Eden Project in Cornwall...

, near the site of the ancient Royal Bath, which has been interlinked with historic Georgian spa buildings such as the nearby Hot and Cross Baths. The building is in a strongly contemporary style in contrast to its Georgian

Georgian architecture

Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

surroundings. The complex houses both traditional and modern spa facilities.

External links

• Photo tour