Roman Remains Found Under Bath’s Jane Austen Ballroom
Jane Austen came here to dance. Nearly 2,000 years before her, Romans were digging ditches in the same ground.
Restoration of Bath Assembly Rooms, a Georgian building in the north of the city, has uncovered a network of Roman ditches. They held pottery, coins, glassware and a fragment of a military helmet. Experts say the finds expand the known extent of Roman occupation in Bath and suggest more remains lie under neighboring Georgian buildings and streets.
What the team found
Archaeologists recovered almost 60 fragments of Roman pottery, glass vessels, animal bones, roof tiles, Roman coins and a limestone tessera that may once have belonged to a mosaic floor. A slot for a beam shows that a Roman building once stood on the spot. The helmet fragment is seen as further evidence that military personnel helped build the settlement.
Ordinary suburbanites
Marek Lewcun of Wessex Archaeology said the finds point to ordinary people, the kind who live in a modern suburb, with small shops selling pottery and bread. He suggested wealthier residents and retired military leaders more likely lived farther up the hill in villas. Relatively little had turned up north of the city before, because Bath’s Georgian streets are so well protected that construction projects that could reveal remains rarely happen.
Why the ditches survived
The builders of the Assembly Rooms in the late 18th century did not dig deep foundations, because they knew the thick clay would support the structure. That left the Roman ditches untouched for archaeologists to study during the current 20 million pound restoration. The team also found Georgian items such as wig curlers, wine bottles and tobacco pipes. The building is due to reopen next year.
Sources
- The Guardian, 23 September 2026, with comments from Wessex Archaeology and the National Trust
- Wessex Archaeology, Georgian artefacts beneath one of Austen’s favourite ballrooms