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MAEVE - LONDON ROAD, BATH
written and read by Clare Reddaway
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Maeve just wants to spend Midsummer Night celebrating the end of exams with her mates. She doesn’t mean to conjure up a mischevious mythical creature and she certainly doesn’t mean to follow him into a world that is both familiar and strange. |
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MAEVE
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The Story Listen now Directions Listen now |
To download the story or walking directions, right-click on the respective link (or ctrl-click for a Mac) and save the .mp3 file. |
LIVE LAUNCH Saturday 26th November 2011, Kilter, London Rd
STORY LOCATION & DIRECTIONS
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This story starts in Alice Park. Enter the park and take the first tarmaced path to your left. Follow it up the hill towards the tennis courts to find a memorial garden with three linked pools. Begin the story. Retrace your steps to the entrance of the park. Turn left down the Gloucester Road towards the T junction. Cross the Gloucester Road at the zebra crossing. At the T junction with the London Road by the traffic lights turn right to head along the London Road towards Bath. Continue straight along the London Road past Morrisons and Snow Hill. At the junction between the London Road and Bathwick Street a flight of steps takes the pavement onto a different level. Do not climb the steps. Instead cross the London Road and Bathwick Street as though to go to the Curfew pub. Once you are on the west side of Bathwick Street head towards the river and stand on Cleveland Bridge. The story ends on Cleveland Bridge. |
FACTUAL BASIS FOR MAEVE
In case you wondered, here's some of the proper historical info that inspired Maeve. Today’s London Road runs along the same route as the Roman Fosse Way and was the main access into Roman Aquae Sulis. Aquae Sulis was a major centre of pilgrimage and as such attracted supplicants from all over the Empire: coins from as far away as Egypt have been discovered here. Eye disease was a common reason for visitors to seek a cure from the waters. The Fosse Way would have been wooded. Roman graves have been discovered beside the road. There are Roman buildings under what is now Hudson’s Wine Bar, and it is thought that there might have been a commercial and secular centre in that area serving the religious complex of Aquae Sulis. The River Avon would have been wider and shallower than it is today, as the current river has been managed, controlled and contained. There is archaeological evidence of a ford across the river just downstream of the current Cleveland Bridge. Excavation at the Sacred Spring has by no means been completed – the swamp has not yet yielded all of its curse tablets.
Heads & Tales thanks Bath & North East Somerset Council, Stuart Burroughs of the Museum of Bath at Work and Jane Bircher for their assistance with the creation of this story. It was recorded by Joe Jones, with thanks to Steve Osborne and Real World Studios. Photographs are by Lisa Fryer.