Roman Baths, Strand Lane
The Roman Bath on Strand Lane is one of London's most curious and least-visited historic curiosities, tucked away in a narrow alleyway just off the Strand near the boundary of the City of Westminster and the former precinct of the Knights Templar. Despite its name and long-held reputation, the structure is not definitively Roman in origin, but it remains one of the oldest and most atmospheric small heritage sites in the entire city. The bath itself is a rectangular stone cistern, fed by a natural spring, measuring roughly fifteen feet long and six feet wide. It has been a source of fascination and debate among antiquarians, historians, and curious Londoners for centuries, and its obscurity only adds to its peculiar charm.
The site's history is genuinely layered and contested. The water supply comes from a spring that may have been in use since ancient times, and there are enthusiasts who insist the stonework itself dates to the Roman occupation of Londinium. The more cautious scholarly consensus, however, suggests the visible structure is more likely a seventeenth-century construction, possibly built as a cold plunge bath associated with the former town house of the Duke of Norfolk or with buildings belonging to Arundel House, the grand Tudor and Stuart mansion that once occupied the land between the Strand and the Thames in this part of the city. The bath was well known and fashionable in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a cold-water bathing establishment, reportedly used for health cures and invigorating swims. Charles Dickens famously mentioned it in David Copperfield, where the young protagonist takes a dip, lending the place a secondary literary distinction on top of its already romanticised archaeological status.
In person, the experience of visiting the Roman Bath is quite unlike almost anything else in central London. The bath is maintained by the National Trust and can be viewed through a window in the wall of Surrey Steps, the small passageway leading off Surrey Street near its junction with Temple Place. Because public access to the interior is extremely limited and viewing is typically done through this small window using a light switch provided on the outside wall, there is an almost theatrical quality to the encounter — you peer in at the still, faintly greenish water filling the ancient stone tank in a vaulted chamber that feels hermetically sealed from the city above. The air around the alleyway has a cool, damp quality, and the sounds of traffic on the Strand feel surprisingly distant even though you are only a few metres away from one of London's busiest thoroughfares.
The surrounding area is exceptionally rich in history and interest. Strand Lane itself sits between the Strand to the north and Embankment to the south, in a part of London that retains traces of the great riverside mansions of the Tudor and Stuart nobility. King's College London is immediately adjacent, and the building that houses the bath is owned by the college. The Victorian splendour of Somerset House is just steps away, and the Royal Courts of Justice lie a short walk to the west. Temple Church and the Inner and Middle Temples, those ancient legal institutions with roots going back to the Knights Templar, are within comfortable walking distance to the east. The whole neighbourhood repays slow exploration on foot.
Visiting the Roman Bath requires a little planning and some patience. Because it is viewable primarily from outside through the window rather than through open public access, visitors need to locate the unmarked or subtly marked Surrey Steps alleyway, which runs between Surrey Street and the Embankment-facing streets. The National Trust nominally administers the property and from time to time organises open days when the interior can be accessed, though these are infrequent. The best advice is to check with the National Trust or King's College London before visiting if you hope to enter rather than simply peer through the glass. The site is free to view from outside and can be found at any time of day, though the alleyway can feel very secluded after dark.
One of the genuinely fascinating things about this place is how thoroughly it has been forgotten by most Londoners, let alone tourists. It sits within a ten-minute walk of some of the most visited sites in the country — the South Bank, Covent Garden, the Embankment — and yet almost no one stumbles upon it. The spring that feeds it continues to flow, as it has done for an unknown number of centuries, keeping the bath perpetually full of cold, clear water. Whether Roman legionaries really did bathe here or whether the whole Roman connection is a pleasing myth built up over generations of wishful antiquarianism almost does not matter; the place carries genuine age and genuine strangeness, and in a city where authentic mystery is increasingly rare, that is worth something considerable.