the whole building.  The shabbiness of the chancel in particular is enhanced by a casement which does duty for an E. window.  Note (1) Dec. windows to aisle; (2) rood-loft stair; (3) curious quatrefoil piscina in sanctuary; (4) some fragments of old glass in E. window of S. aisle.  At the W. end is a handsomely-carved font, and the remains of another font from Spargrove Church (now destroyed) are under the tower.  An ugly monument to the Bisse family stands in one of the S. window sills.  The vestry is a nondescript chamber reached from the chancel by a flight of stone steps.

BATH.  A city and parliamentary borough on the Avon, 107 m.  W. from London, with a population (in 1901) of 52,751.  It has stations both on the G.W. and the Midland lines.  Few cities are more romantically situated than Bath, but it is not its situation which has given to it its celebrity.  Its prosperity has from time immemorial depended upon its possession of the remarkable mineral springs in which the fashionable world has at different periods discerned so many healing and social virtues.  The popular story of their discovery by the legendary King Bladud is too trite to need re-telling.  The real history of Bath begins as early as A.D. 44, when it is known to have been a Roman station.  Its Latin name was Aquae Sulis, Sul being a local divinity, whose name appears on several inscriptions in the Museum, and may have some connection with the neighbouring hill of Solsbury.  A temple to this goddess existed on the site of the present Pump Room, and the extensive ruins of the contiguous bathing establishment bear eloquent testimony to the use which the Romans made of the waters.  Here, too, converged three of their chief highways, the Fosseway, from Lincoln to Axminster, the Via Julia, which connected it with S. Wales, and Akeman Street, the main thoroughfare to London.  The after-history of Bath is chequered.  In 676 King Osric founded here a nunnery (eventually transformed into a monastery), and in 973 it was the scene of Edgar’s coronation.  After the Conquest it was a bone of contention in the Norman quarrels, and was burnt to the ground by Geoffrey of Coutances.  After being harried by the sword, Bath passed under the hammer.  Its ecclesiastical importance begins when John de Villula purchased it of the king, and transferred hither his episcopal stool from Wells (see further, p. 19).  In mediaeval days Bath was a walled city, and fragments of its fortifications, crowned by a modern battlement, may still be seen in “Borough Walls”; and two round-headed arches of the old E. gate are visible in a passage behind the Empire Hotel, leading to the river.  The battle of Lansdown gives Bath a place in the annals of the Great Rebellion.  But the fame of Bath is social rather than historical.  It was not until the 18th cent. that the city reached the zenith of its importance.  The creator of modern Bath was the social adventurer Nash.  By sheer force of native impudence Nash pushed himself into the position