WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Friday, January 14, 2011

DAVE BRAUND-PHILLIPS: Bath’s Romans Baths

Last weekend Jess and I went to the Roman Bath in Bath City, north Somerset. It was a brilliant display of Roman engineering. I thought I would share with you a snippet of their industrial technology and a few of my own pictures.

The Roman Baths are below the modern street level and have four main features: the sacred spring, the Roman temple, the Roman bath house and finds from Roman Bath.

The sacred spring lies at the very heart of the ancient monument. Water rises here at the rate of over a million litres a day and at a temperature of 460C. The spring rises within the courtyard of the temple of Sulis Minerva and water from it feeds the Roman baths. There is some slight evidence - an earthen bank projecting into the spring - that suggests it was already a focal point for worship before the Roman temple and baths were built.

Roman engineers surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. To provide a stable foundation for this they drove oak piles into the mud. At first this reservoir formed an open pool in a corner of the temple courtyard but in the second century AD it was enclosed within a barrel vaulted building and columns and statue bases were placed in the spring itself. Enclosing the spring in a dimly lit building in this way and erecting statues and columns within it must have enhanced the aura of mystery that surrounded it. Offerings were thrown into the spring throughout the Roman period.

Eventually the vaulted building collapsed into the spring itself. We do not know when this was but it is likely to have been in the sixth or seventh century. The oak piles sunk into the mud two thousand years ago continue to provide a stable foundation for the Roman reservoir walls today.

The Roman plumbing and drainage system is still largely in place and shows the ingenuity of the Roman engineers. Lead pipes were used to carry hot spa water around the site using gravity flow. The spring overflow is where surplus water from the spring, not used in the baths, flows out to a Roman drain.The Roman great drain carries all the spa water from the site to the River Avon four hundred metres away.







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