Sunday Walk: No Swinging on Sundays

From gravel walks and groves to fireworks and fun...

This literary walk is based on the years of research that led to No Swinging on Sundays, a brilliant book filled to the brim with Bath's rich history.

Meet at the bookshop at 10:30am for some tea, coffee, and cake before a prompt start at 11am.

Bath's pleasure gardens are gone beyond recall. Yet in their heyday they were as central to the city's social life as its assembly rooms, pump room or parades. They were where well-heeled visitors came to party. With lamplit groves and labyrinths, grottoes and supper boxes, and a seemingly never-ending round of concerts and circus acts, balloon ascents and firework displays, they were loud and lively. Against all the odds, the grandest of them all, Sydney Gardens, opened in 1795, survives as a public park. Shorn of its attractions and cut in two by a railway line, it takes imagination to conjure up the shades of revellers treading its gravelled paths in search of excitement and exercise - though no swinging was tolerated on Sundays.