Bath Abbey's Monuments : An Illustrated History

Bath Abbey has the largest and strangest collection of over 1,500 church monuments in the UK. This is their story.

Bath Abbey has a nationally significant collection of 1,500 church monuments, more than any other church in the country: three times the number of ledger stones and an equal number of wall tablets as Westminster Abbey. These monuments chart the rise of Georgian Bath, from market town to leisure capital. They tell the stories of parishioners, visitors to the spa, the doctors who treated them, and the sculptors who commemorated them. The social history of Georgian Bath is told through the Abbey’s monuments; they are just as much a part of the city’s Georgian architecture as the Circus and Royal Crescent. However, they now reflect the visions of the Victorian architects who reordered the Abbey’s interior 1835-1874, most notably George Gilbert Scott.This book tells the story of these monuments, the lives they commemorate, and why their management led to a £19.3 million project to save the historic floor from collapse.