The Bath Springs

The Bath Springs in Somerset are perhaps the longest venerated site in Britain. The three hot springs, which are unique in Britain, were the site of votive offerings since the springs were formed over 10,000 years ago, and their importance continued throughout the Neolithic period and the Iron Age until the Romans constructed their famous temple and baths which form a world heritage site today.

The Roman-built spring pool

The springs are found in a natural bowl between the steep hillsides surrounding Bath, enclosed in a meander of the River Avon. In prehistory, the ground was marshy with several braids of the river flowing through it. The springwater is a constant 42ºC which would have shrouded the entire area with steam and fog, especially in winter, adding to the magic and liminality of the site. The bitter and sulphurous water has long been associated with healing, and indeed Bladud, the legendary founder of Bath, was said to have discovered the springs after seeing his pigs use the water to cure themselves of skin complaints and subsequently healing himself of leprosy.

Model of the Roman buildings

The King’s Bath Spring, around which the Romans built their temple, is the largest of the three hot springs, and 300,000 gallons of hot water surges from it daily. The Hot Spring and Cross Bath Spring are smaller but were both venerated from prehistory to the Roman period. The Hot Spring is a spa today.

Throughout the Mesolithic period, which dates from 10,000BC-4000BC, worked flint blades and scrapers from many parts of Britain, fossils, hazelnuts, pyrites and probably myriad other organic items which have not survived were deposited in the spring pipes. During the Iron Age, a causeway was built and coins became the favoured offering. Around 70AD, the Romans began three centuries of increasingly elaborate building work.

Some of the Roman votive offerings

The spring was now enclosed into a reservoir which fed into the famous Great Bath, one of the wonders of Britain and the Roman world, an elaborate feat of engineering with a 20-metre vaulted ceiling. A series of smaller baths were used for various health and spa therapies. Windows opened onto the spring pool so the visitors could make their votive offerings. These now included pieces of armour or weapons, bronze and pewter domestic items, horse harness, gems and jewellery, as well as curse tablets invoking divine retribution for thefts or slights.

The temple pediment, showing the male Sul.

A sacrificial altar was built directly north of the spring, in a vast precinct which faced the temple where few people but priests could enter. Bath was sacred to the Celtic deity Sulis or Sul, who was linked to the sun and was equated by the Romans to Minerva, whose bronze and flame-shrouded statue was constantly tended within the temple sanctum. The image of Sul, created by Celtic craftspeople, was displayed on the temple pediment and shows a distinctly masculine face, often erroneously described as a gorgon. The writhing hair and moustache probably represents the sun’s rays. It is unusual, but not impossible, that the Romans associated the site with a female deity of their own. Perhaps they saw water as a distinctly feminine entity which would emasculate their male gods. Interestingly, during rebuilding work two centuries later, new facades showing the Roman Luna and Sol, the sun and the moon, were added to the temple. 

 The bronze head of Minerva, whose statue was tended in the temple.

The Roman sacred site which attracted visitors and pilgrims from across Europe began to decline in the fourth century. The low-lying site was now subject to regular flooding which eventually choked the Roman hypocausts with mud and sand and the baths fell into disuse. Eventually the buildings collapsed or were deliberately destroyed by Christian marauders, and eventually the area reverted to marsh as it had once been, with the exception of pillars of Roman masonry jutting incongruously from the swamp. The springs continued to be venerated for healing purposes into modern history but it was over a thousand years before the true sanctity and history of the site was again discovered.

The altar which was toppled and smashed after the site was abandoned

The River Ure

The Ure near Thornborough

The River Ure in Yorkshire had, along with the Swale, a spiritual and ritual significance equivalent to the Thames and the Stonehenge Avon in southern Britain. Several henges are found on high ground along its valley, many now little more than unexcavated cropmarks. The Thornborough Henges are an exception. Three henges, which possibly represent Orion’s Belt, were dug from gleaming white gypsum and would have been a focal point for a vast distance all around. The Devil’s Arrows standing stones are a little further downstream near the confluence with the Swale.

The central Thornborough Henge

The Ure is sourced in the Yorkshire Dales and flows through the lowlands after it joins with the Swale, where it changes its name to the Ouse, and flows through York and eventually reaches the Humber Estuary, making it one of the most significant rivers of northern Britain. Ure and Ouse may have the same etymological origin.

The Humber Estuary

Rivers were considered sacred in Neolithic and Bronze Age times and this belief survived in various forms until modern times. The River Avon is believed to have formed part of a processional route to Stonehenge, linking the living with the dead or the physical world with the spiritual world. Ritual offerings and the bones and ashes of the dead were deposited in the water, which represented a liminal boundary between worlds. Rivers were the arteries of the land, much like the arteries of the body, and water was a life-giving essence which formed a key part of rituals. The Ure, which means ‘Holy River’ in ancient Celtic, was probably a central part of ritual life to the people of northern Britain, although four thousand years of time has largely eradicated all physical traces of this.

Ripon Cathedral

The spiritual traces however, remain. Several now-ruined abbeys were built along the river’s valley, and the cathedral at Ripon is situated on the banks of the Ure. Ripon has a particularly powerful sense of peace which I never normally feel in an urban environment, and I felt that same powerful essence at every place I visited along the river. I watched a barn owl flying along the banks at twilight and wondered if that was a sign that, just as the river flows on forever, the spiritual qualities it reflects also do the same.

The River Swale

Rivers had special significance in ancient Britain, both for practical reasons such as transport, navigation and water supply, and for spiritual reasons. Water has always been closely linked to the spiritual realms and Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments were commonly built near rivers. Stonehenge, linked to the River Avon, and the monuments on the Thames and its tributaries are famous. The River Swale in northern Britain was once of similar sacred importance, now largely forgotten.

The Swale derives from sualuae, which means ‘deluge’. The river is one of the fastest flowing in Britain and can rise three metres in twenty minutes as rainwater pours off the dales into the valley. Even where the river crosses the gentler lowlands and joins with the Ure, it is still fierce when in spate.

The Swale as it joins the Ure

The importance of the Swale likely links to the Neolithic trade in stone axes. Greenstone axes were crafted in Langdale in the Lake District and transported all across Britain, and had a significance far beyond their practical use. Their route into southern Britain likely followed the River Eden through Cumbria, also the focus of many sacred monuments, and then the River Swale which leads towards the lowlands.

Maiden Castle

The unusual henge of Maiden Castle was built on high ground above the Swale near the village of Grinton in upper Swaledale. Further downstream at Catterick was another henge and timber enclosure, dated to around 2500BC and only recently discovered. The huge standing stones of the Devil’s Arrows are a short distance from the confluence of the Swale with the River Ure. Another interesting place is St Michael’s Church near Downholme, on a unusually shaped and very prominent hill called How Hill. This would have been a key landmark for people following the river millennia before the church was built, and perhaps had also sacred significance long before this point. It is certainly a peaceful and powerful feeling spot today.

St Michael’s Church and How Hill

The River Thames

It's interesting how a river can have a personality, and how that personality can survive through millennia and countless waves of incoming people.
The Thames is Britain’s most important river. Today it is a reflection of Britain’s commercial might as it flows through the heart of London, and for millennia it has been central to trade, defence, invasion, sustenance and ritual.

‘Thames’ is perhaps Britain’s oldest place name. It derives from Tamesis, the name recorded by the Romans, which has a pre-Celtic origin and means ‘dark’. This is in common with other river names including the Thame, a tributary of the Thames, and the Tamar in Cornwall. Its flow is typically muddy and it is tidal for a large stretch of its course. 'Dark' may also reflect its spirit, which even now is said to demand human lives each year, to suck swimmers inexplicably beneath its surface, and to whisper to people on its banks and entice them to jump. 

The confluence of the Thames and the Windrush in Oxfordshire

The river's importance far predates the Romans who founded Londinium. The Thames has one of the highest densities of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments of any British river. These include the great henge monuments of Stanton Harcourt near Oxford, the Dorchester Rings, and the henges under the city of Oxford and at Abingdon. Many of these were situated at confluence points, which were perhaps used strategically for their landmark value or symbolically as a meeting point of waters and people.

The Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt

The source of the Thames is disputed but often said to be at Seven Springs in Gloucestershire. The river Kennet which flows through Wiltshire is one of its earliest tributaries, and is suggested by some to be the original ‘source’ river. The Kennet is sourced at the springs which surround the world-famous monuments of Avebury and Silbury Hill. Perhaps some of these monuments’ prestige came from their location at Britain’s watery heart.

The ritual importance predates even the Neolithic period. Large numbers of human skulls and other bones, along with stone axes and tools, were deposited in the waters of the Thames during the Mesolithic period, long before the first farmers arrived. There is increasing evidence that many of Britain’s sacred sites had a sanctity thousands of years older than previously realised.

                 The River Kennet

Many rivers have a female identity. The Thames is one of the few that is considered male. ‘Old Father Thames’, a bearded old man, has long been the personification of the river. It is often linked to the Egyptian Goddess Isis. The Thames at Oxford is called ‘Isis’. This is suggested to be a cult brought by the Romans, or an esoteric mystery cult of much greater antiquity, but in fact this is a much more recent name, probably coined by Oxford students in the Medieval period, and is a truncation of the Latin ‘Tamesis’.

Unusually, there is little more folklore associated with this mysterious and long-revered river.

            Old Father Thames

The River Severn

The River Severn, at 220 miles, is the longest river in Britain. It has been of vital importance for trading ships since historic times, was of strategic significance to the Romans, and possibly provided the route the earliest Neolithic farmers took into Britain, from which they spread into the Severn valley, the Cotswolds and the Welsh lowlands.

As well as transport, the river provided drinking water, fish and shellfish, a hunting ground for drinking animals and waterbirds, and it snatched life away through floods and tides surging over the mudflats. Like many rivers, the Severn was said to demand a human life every year. Its ever-changing moods were pivotal to the lives of those who lived around it.

The Severn is tidal as far as Maisemore, just north of Gloucester, and its tidal range of 15 metres is one of the highest in the world. This contributes to the formation of the Severn Bore, a tidal-wave like phenomenon caused by the vast volume of water forced into the river channel. The highest bores, of up to two metres and travelling at up to 13mph, are seen at the equinoxes but the bore occurs to some extent at each full and new moon. Tradition stated incorrectly that it took place each Good Friday, and Gloucestershire miners were traditionally given the day off to go and watch.

The Romans believed the bore was the approaching end of the world. The locals would have been well used to the occurrence, but no doubt would have linked it to a magical phenomenon or the actions of Gods or spirits. This probably links to the folklore surrounding the river.

‘Severn’ derives from Sabrina, a Romanised version of ‘Hafren’, the Celtic name which is still used in the Welsh language. This itself is a later adaptation of ‘Habren’, of unclear etymology but perhaps the oldest known British river name.  

Like many rivers worldwide, the Severn in folklore has a female identity, perhaps deriving from a long-forgotten River Goddess. In one story, a great Welsh landowner called Plynlimon, the geographic source of the Severn, decided to divide his estates between his three daughters, Severn, Wye and Rheidol. Each had to travel to the sea within a day and would then own the land they’d covered. Their travels became the three great rivers which arise in the Welsh hills.

In another story, Sabrina or Hafren was a maiden drowned in the river on the orders of her stepmother. She is sometimes seen swimming fruitlessly towards the bank.

The Severn is also linked to the God Nodens, likely a variation of the Celtic Lludd or Nuada, whose temple overlooked the Severn at Lydney. Unusually for an important river in Britain, there are almost no prehistoric sacred or ritual sites along its course. Perhaps its spirit, epitomised by the destructive bore, demanded otherwise.