Bath-house rebirth could be big draw

IT was with a tinge of sadness that I read Caroline Heaton's letter, City missing a trick with Roman baths, Points of view, October 24, lamenting the fact that the wonderful Roman legionary bath-house which lies beneath Cathedral Green is still not on display to the public.

Sadness, because I worked on the excavation of the building and watched the site back-filled with sand in 1974 when there was then great hope that a better economic climate in the future would see it take its place as a major tourist attraction alongside the cathedral.

However, those hopes have been dashed year on year during the subsequent decades.

In the current recession, there is no prospect of moving things forward but in the future Exeter should perhaps look to other historic cities, such as York where the origins of the city are manifest and have been embraced.

At York, huge interest is generated by its circuit of Roman walls and its purpose-built Viking Jorvik centre.

Exeter (Roman Isca), like York, also has a near complete circuit of city walls plus a buried Roman building of the highest order and, thanks to the work of the late Chris Henderson, the former city archaeologist, we know a great deal about the Roman development of the city.

In 2002, Paul Bidwell, the excavator of the bath-house, described the building as one of the most elaborate of the early Roman empire.

In fact, the building was so grand that after the legion left, it was converted to become Exeter's basilica, the equivalent of the modern civic centre, and therefore the true birthplace of the city in around AD 89.

So the right scheme, sympathetic to the cathedral and its surroundings, could see the bath-house once more thronging with visitors as it did just a few decades after the death of Christ.

In 2004, exactly 30 years after the bath-house was re-sealed, the Exeter Roman Bath-House Trust developed such a scheme and with vision and support this scheme, or one similar, must one day deliver an attraction for the city which will draw visitors from far and wide.

For the citizens of Exeter, this will provide a magnificent below-ground focal point celebrating the birth of the first-ever city in the South West and located only a stone's throw from Exeter's rightly celebrated and magnificent medieval cathedral.

Let's hope we don't have to wait another 30 years.

Dr John P Salvatore

Clyst Heath, Exeter

(by email)