Jane Austen in the Upper Assembly Rooms
When each September comes round, I am filled with thoughts of Jane Austen’s time living here and the city of Bath she experienced. For any Jane Austen fan, a visit to Bath, England is an essential literary pilgrimage. During the Jane Austen Festival, thousands of gentlemen and ladies descend on the city of Bath to celebrate Jane Austen, her life and works for ten days.
The biggest sell out events are the Balls that used to take place on each of the two weekends, and now take place every day. Tickets go on sale in May and are usually gone in 24 hours, leaving the rest of wondering how we can enjoy regency dancing during this week when we visit. Jane is all around us, and it was a big part of her life.
Jane Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1805, and she used her personal experience to bring the city to life in her books. Northanger Abbey, the novel she wrote in her teens, and Persuasion, the last novel she wrote in full are party set in Bath. She knew the city well.
Jane’s writing stalled whilst living her, most probably because she was so busy. Her calendar was filled with social engagements, including trips to the circulating libraries, walks along the river, shopping in Milsom Street, going to the theatre, musical performances, and dancing at the Assembly Rooms.
By the time of the Regency, Bath was no longer the fashionable resort that it once was. The rise in popularity of sea bathing to improve ones health and the royal visits to the south coast sent people to Weymouth, Lyme and Brighton. Mr and Mrs Austen’s dream of finding husbands for their two daughters disappeared as Bath filled with invalids and older men looking for younger wives.
The Georgian architecture that dominated the city when Jane lived in Bath has remained largely unchanged. The result is that you can walk around Bath today and imagine yourself transported back to Jane’s time, walking in her footsteps, and seeing the same sights she saw and visiting the same places she did.
It was however a place her writing stalled, and we can speculate that they were not the happiest of years. in a letter to Cassandra she wrote, “It will be two years tomorrow since we left Bath for Clifton, with what happy feelings of escape.”
The Assembly Rooms
When Jane lived in Bath there were the Upper and Lower Assembly Rooms. Two were needed to take the volume of dancers. They have been owned by the National Trust for a number of years, and many dances that took place in Bath were held here.
Most recently, the National Trust took the Assembly Rooms back. The Fashion Museum that had been in the basement for years had to vacate.
They announced that the Assembly Rooms would close and be part of a large renovation project that I have followed closely. This is one of the ‘before’ pictures, and you can see the large fire places that were lit to keep the dancers warm in winter.
This photograph is a similar room of similar size, and was known as the tea room and concerts were held here every Wednesday in Jane’s day. The Assembly Rooms play a small but important part in Persuasion as Jane uses them as the backdrop for a pivotal scene in the story when Anne Elliot wants to see Captain Wentworth.
Although she does not specifically say that the concert was being held in the Upper Rooms, as opposed to the Lower Rooms, it is clear that it was, because she mentions a room there, the Octagon Room, by name:
Sir Walter, his two daughters, and Mrs Clay, were the earliest of all their party at the rooms in the evening; and as Lady Dalrymple must be waited for, they took their station by one of the fires in the Octagon Room.
In Northanger Abbey, the heroine, Catherine Morland, often visits both the Upper and Lower Rooms.
Catherine eagerly anticipates “the important evening” which was “to usher her into the Upper Rooms”, however..
“…Mrs Allen was so long in dressing that they did not enter the ballroom till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr Allen, he repaired directly to the card-room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves.”
National Trust Project
The national trust have released a number of photographs and updates about the Bath Assembly Room Renovation project set to be completed in 2027.
One exciting discovery is a collection of Georgian items discovered under the Assembly Rooms. Included was the fragments of a wine bottle with the words ‘DALTON’ inscribed on the outside. Wine or another type of alcohol would have been made and stored for Mr Dalton to drink when he frequented the rooms. It dates from 1760.
You can see the amount of work that is going into its renovation in the timeline on the website, and hopefully, when it opens in 2027 (in time for the festival in September), we can once again dance in the Assembly Rooms where Jane danced and planned out her novels.
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Jane Austen, Bath, Jane Austen Festival, Bath Abbey, Assembly Rooms, National Trust, Regency Dancing, Milsom Street, The Circle, Regency, The Crescent, The Octagon, Paragon, Green Park Buildings, Laura Place, Queens Square, Gay Street, Trim Street, Jane Austen Centre, Sydney Gardens, Holburne Museum, Parade Gardens.
