made, it was impossible without pumping machinery to sufficiently
overcome it. To my discovery of the Roman drain, or rather to
Mr. Irvine's, and the excavating, opening, and reconstructing it
which followed (under my superintendence, at the charges of the
Corporation), enabling me to drain off the hot water from the soil, I
owe the ability to reveal what had been hidden since the destruction
of the city of Bath in the year A.D. 577.[10] The stopping up and
destruction of the drain prevented the water from flowing away, so
that the buildings of the baths were filled with water of a height
until it reached the level of the adjoining land, covering, as a
guardian, the lead and other valuables. Soil then gravitated into the
ruins and thus further assisted in preserving the antiquities, so that
they were altogether hidden from the people who re-built the ruined
city of Bath, and from those who in successive generations succeeded
them. The subterranean "passage traced 24ft." from the western side
of Lucas's bath, "at the end of which was found a leaden cistern,"
was not in any way Roman work, but mediæval, and was formed some time
after the construction of the Abbey house, as an aqueduct for the hot
water with which the soil was saturated. This construction is the
only evidence of an early discovery of this eastward wing of the bath,
indeed the only evidence of mediæval work of any kind in connection
with the baths, except the enclosure of the various springs or wells.
The King's Bath, the Cross, and the Lepers' Bath were simply the wells
or cisterns of the springs which were bathed in to the damage of the
purity of the water, without dressing-rooms of any kind.

[Footnote 10: "But the old municipal independence seems to have
been passing away. The record of the battle in the chronicle of
the conquerors connects the three cities (Bath, Gloucester, and
Cirencester) with three Kings; and from the Celtic names of these