Bath Assembly Rooms
Designed by John Wood the Younger, the Bath Assembly Rooms is now managed by the National Trust, who are currently working on a new visitor experience due to open in 2026, but until then the rooms are open for guided tours as well as a range of events.
The New, or the Upper Rooms as they were known, were a place for people to meet and enjoy entertainments including balls, concerts, teas and gambling. The upper echelon flocked to the Assembly Rooms, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and the painter Thomas Gainsborough. At the heart of fashionable Georgian society, the Assembly Rooms were the place to see and be seen!
Jane Austen included these magnificent rooms in both of the novels which she set in the city, ‘Persuasion’ and ‘Northanger Abbey’.
The Assembly Rooms play a small but important part in Persuasion as the backdrop for a pivotal scene in the story. Anne Elliot is keen to visit the Rooms in the hope of meeting Captain Wentworth, but her father’s snobbish attitude prevents her from doing so. However, when their relative, Lady Dalrymple, is to attend a concert, Sir Walter and his daughter, Elizabeth, are prepared to attend.
Sir Walter, his two daughters, and Mrs Clay, were the earliest of all their party at the rooms in the evening; and as Lady Dalrymple must be waited for, they took their station by one of the fires in the Octagon Room.
In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, often visits both the Upper and Lower Rooms. Catherine eagerly looks forward to attending and ‘the important evening came which was to usher her to the Upper Rooms’, but
...Mrs Allen was so long in dressing that they did not enter the ballroom till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr Allen, he repaired directly to the card-room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves
When she visits the Lower Rooms, Catherine is introduced to Mr Tilney and her conversation with him shows that she had visited the Upper Rooms on the Monday.
‘Have you yet honoured the Upper Rooms?’
‘Yes, sir. I was there last Monday.’
The BBC used the Assembly Rooms for the filming of an adaptation of Northanger Abbey in 1986 and Persuasion in 1995. The 2007 version of Persuasion, starring Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliot, also used the Assembly Rooms for filming.
Austen fan or not, the Assembly Rooms are well worth a visit.
Bath Assembly Rooms
Bennett St,
Bath BA1 2QH
The ‘Awesomely Austen’ series makes the perfect introduction to these stories.
