PLEASE I'm begging the neopagan girlies to stop spreading misinformation online, because I've just seen someone argue in earnest that the UK government has banned swimming in the ancient geo-thermal spring at Bath due to a hatred of 'native Celtic spirituality', and completely ignoring the fact that it was closed after a girl contracted a brain-eating amoeba and fucking died
Ancient geo thermal spring at Bath perfec t size for put girlie n to n\ap! inside very Soft and Comfort woman bathe soundly put girl in Geo Thermal Spring. Put Neopagan In Spring. no problems ever in sprinng because good Amoeba and Water for girl brain weak of big girl head. Ancient geothermal spring yes a place for a person put neopagans in ancient celtic water can trust spring in Bath for giveing good love to girlie. friend amoeba.
I visited this place in the 90s and they didn't let you swim in it then. I'm kind of surprised that they started letting people swim in it again. It's an archaeological site. It does not exist in the form it did when people regularly swam in it.
Native Celtic spirituality involves swimming in Roman built baths?
Oh man, my shitpost has broken containment, so I must add some points for clarity:
the Baths have been closed since 1978; I genuinely have no idea why this became a point of discourse in the year of our lord 2026, but that's TikTok for you (or, more accurately, Instagram reels, because I will never view a single TikTok in my life, I am 33 and I cannot be doing it)
and now to the meatier point: yes, the Baths themselves are Roman, but the geo-thermal spring that forms the basis of the Baths was already a sacred site for the pre-Roman Celtic people who lived in the area. Archaeological evidence is pretty firm on this. A cool, groovy fact about the Romans is that a lot of their religion (and just their imperial tactics in general) was based on the principles of syncretism. In practice, this means incorporating beliefs, practices or deities from one religion into another. The Romans figured out that, rather than suppress all local religion, it was easier to allow the people in the areas that you've conquered to continue to worship their gods, with the caveat that you're going to really highlight the similarities between their gods and yours, and strongly suggest that their gods are really just versions of yours, because Roman superiority, or something. This is called interpretatio Romana for the Latin freaks out there. Before the Romans turned up, the springs at Bath were already a worship site for the Celtic goddess, Sulis. The Romans looked at Sulis, waved their arms about a bit, and said 'cool, so Minerva, yeah?' and built the Baths on that site, dedicated to Sulis-Minerva - a version of the Celtic Sulis which was syncretised with the Roman Minerva. The Celtic people got to keep a version of their god, the Romans got their Baths, and everyone was happy, damp, and warm. In theory, anyway. That's not really how imperialism works, but y'know.
Can't believe I had to break out my MA in Myth, Narrative and Theory for a goddamn shitpost, but that's why this site remains elite.
I mean the thing is that the brain-eating amoeba is very much an optional thing lmao. The exact same spring waters (The King’s Spring, under Stall Street) are used at Thermae Bath Spa. Thermae Bath Spa is the public spa which is literally right next to the Roman Baths, on account of them using the same spring water. The security guards outside the Roman Bath shop spend about half their day explaining that you cannot swim in the Roman Bath and that your ticket for the spa day is actually for the spa around the corner which is in a different building, and then they explain it all over again to the next person.
As the city train station is called Bath Spa, the city is Bath, the spa is Thermae Bath Spa, and the Roman attraction is the Roman Baths, and the spa at Bath is a famous and popular attraction where you can swim in the authentic waters of the hot springs, and they’re all on top of each other, it’s no wonder that people are constantly incredibly confused. I am genuinely sympathetic about people getting confused on the internet when grown adults from all over the planet can’t understand it, when they’re looking right at it and receiving explicit instructions about it.
As the Thermae marketing puts it, Thermae Bath Spa offers a unique opportunity to bathe in Bath’s naturally warm, mineral-rich waters just as the Celts and Romans did over 2,000 years ago.
This is because it is the same water. The water that is cleaned. Kuzco’s water.
Thermae Bath Spa draws water from the three springs – the King’s Spring (from under Stall Street), the Cross Bath (with some water rising directly to the surface of the Cross Bath in order to honour the desires of the Spring Foundation to let an unadulterated source of the water rise from Mother Earth into the atmosphere) and the Hetling Spring (a new bore hole sunk in 1998 and 2011). The water is tested weekly and has been consistently biologically hygienic.
That’s because they treat the water, because brain-eating amoeba are both a) optional and b) bad for spa marketing.
The reasons they haven’t cleaned up the Roman Baths for public swimming is because those buildings do far better as a delicate and important piece of heritage that people are perfectly happy to buy tickets to. Why the hell should a Roman cultural site also be run as a swimming pool. Like, why bother doing that. The reason you can’t swim in it is because there’s no incentives for letting you. But the amoeba aren’t a blocker. Amoeba are entirely optional. Nor is it insane to want to swim in the UK’s most famous hot spring. The same waters are right there to swim in - in a different building next door.
A problem Bath has is that it’s a convenient and pretty UNESCO world heritage city with lots of attractions that’s quite walkable, but it’s also small as fuck, really old, and constantly at capacity. The attractions don’t really want much more traffic. The spa is constantly fully booked and that’s how they want to keep it. The Christmas Market is absolute hell. They have more than enough traffic. They don’t want to accommodate more people or offer different experiences - or clean up the waters at the Roman monument so, like, 50 people a day can swim in it. So they haven’t.














