Bath History Festival 2025

The second annual Bath History Festival brings a whole day of history talks to Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on Saturday 1 November.

It’s a great opportunity to catch up with what experts on our heritage are contributing to current knowledge. The focus is on the thousand years that stretch from before the Norman conquest up to the early Georgians, including talks that acknowledge the way today’s scientific research sheds a special light on understanding of the past.

The Festival, presented by BRLSI and supported by the History of Bath Research Group and the Bath Branch of the Historical Association, is a chance for history enthusiasts to meet, exchange views and find out more about history organisation from across the city.

Registration takes place from 9.15am and the History Festival runs from 9.45am until 5.30pm.

A light sandwich lunch, tea & coffee are included in your ticket price.

Talks include: 

Richard III and the double helix 

Bath University Professor Turi King, who led scientific investigations to prove the last Plantagenet king was indeed buried below a Leicester car park, explains how she has sequenced DNA to unravel critical historical mysteries in Britain and continental Europe. Professor King is Director of the University’s Milner Centre for Evolution.

The people of Anglo-Saxon, medieval and post-medieval Bath: insights from excavated burials from Bath Abbey

Cai Mason, Senior Archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, who directed the excavations at Bath Abbey from 2018 to 2022, reports on the excavations of 112 burials and remains of over 2,200 people from the late 10th to early 19th centuries. They included unusual Anglo-Saxon ‘charcoal burials’, medieval monks and lay people, and the elite of Tudor, Stuart and Georgian Bath. He describes their origins, lifestyle, health, social status and occasionally violent demise, changes to burial practices, and how the physical remains relate to the development of Bath Abbey and broader history.

The medieval Bath Mint and Anglo-Saxon and Norman coinage

Bradley Hopper, expert in ancient and medieval British coinages, sets the scene for the return of the Chew Valley Hoard to Somerset with a look at money before and after the Norman Conquest, and how it was produced and circulated. He is Head of Coins at Noonans, the specialist Mayfair auction house for coins, medals and jewellery,

Retailing silver in Stuart and early Georgian Bath and the West Country

Vanessa Brett, a former editor of the Silver Society’s Journal, is working on a book about the silver trade in the West Country from about 1550. She recently published two books about a family of luxury shopkeepers whose Bath outlet was in Terrace Walk between 1700 and 1750. Their famous shops at other resorts and in London attracted royalty, aristocrats, wealthy merchants and professional families; remarkably for the period they survived in trade for three generations and 100 years. 

Restoring Royalty: new discoveries from Bath’s Tudor portraits

Jim Riseley of the Victoria Art Gallery explains how scientific analysis and painstaking conservation have revealed fresh details about two of Bath’s oldest portraits. The Gallery’s painting of Henry VIII, after Holbein, has recently undergone restoration and tests confirm it was a studio copy close to the date of the celebrated original. The portrait of his father, Henry VII, is currently being investigated to determine its real age and uncover how it was created. Jim will share the latest findings.

Do join your fellow history lovers and if you’re not already a BRLSI Member but would like to join and get reduced-price tickets for all of our talks, along with other benefits, go to our membership page for full details.

NB: There will be images of skeletons, which some people may find upsetting.

Henry VII image credit: Victoria Art Gallery, Bath and North East Somerset Council