A Prescription for Everyday Life: Bath (Part 1)
We’re starting a new series with local prescriptions for everyday life. Each month — maybe more often if we can get it together and the world keeps opening — we’ll focus on one location and tell you about the independents, the social spaces, the nature spots, the creative outlets, and the communities — that can help you have more good days.
First up, Bath, Claire’s new home town. We’ve been discovering this Georgian city beyond the tourist places and the Bridgerton version we’ve come to love. Within its crescent streets and hilly avenues, Bath holds many possibilities for helping us live more thoughtful lives. Here are some of our newly discovered places for finding more of what we need.
For Purpose: Cassia
A recent addition to Bath’s creative life, Cassia Coworking and Café opened on the riverside this spring and has already attracted those of us seeking to get out of our houses and back into a beautifully designed working environment that doesn’t have dirty clothes on the floor, the same four walls around us, or Netflix tempting us.
You can choose to work out of the café, or you can book a space in the study — in which case you get access to the Snug for private phone calls, tea, coffee and water brought to you regularly throughout the day and a supportive group of people around you making things happen too.
A lockdown-born dream founded by Anna Sabine and Tom Graham who wanted to combine the benefits of a café, coworking and bar in one place, Cassia proves the antidote to our languishing moments. And with a set of values that matches many of the companies and individuals who choose to work out of here, it's becoming our go-to place for reconnecting with a world we’ve long been locked out of.
For Nature: Botanica Studios
What started as a market stall is now a densely packed house-plant pop-up (and consultancy business) founded by plant stylist Alice Dobie.
There’s a warm welcome for both the faint-hearted and the more adept, for those willing but maybe not yet able to cultivate greenery in their own homes and those with a collection they adore and are hoping to build upon. Many plants here are chosen for their tolerance like Ceropegia woodii (string of hearts) and golden pathos, others for the touches that they might add to a space.
Here the aesthetic appeal of plants sits closely with their calming benefits and ties to our emotional health, with plants as companions in our days, particularly the stay-at-home ones.
For Doing Good: Share and Repair:
Many a time we’ve had a toaster or printer that we couldn’t fix (in spite of Youtube videos) and that ultimately ended up at the tip, when they might have been revived and returned to life in our homes.
Step in Share and Repair founded by local Lorna Montgomery which fixes just this problem by providing the space, the volunteers and the know-how to get things working again. Just having celebrated its fourth birthday, this community group and charity also offers How-to Sessions to learn repair techniques yourself.
And if you’re trying to reduce the amount that you consume, you can also rent popular appliances, tools, house and garden items, and even camping equipment, so there’s no use once and throwaway culture going on but rather an investment in a shared community cupboard (their Library of Things) from which we can all borrow.
For Mental Wellbeing: Urban Garden
Many years in the making, this social enterprise and garden center in Royal Victoria Park recently opened after three failed attempts due to the shifting COVID situation.
As much about people as plants, the Urban Garden is run by Grow Yourself a Community Interest Company (CIC) that helps young people get back into work and partners with the charity Grow for Life which offers horticultural therapy programs. The range of plants (cacti, terrariums, edibles, shrubs, perennials) stocked in its light-filled glasshouses include many that are grown on-site in partnership with BANES council and volunteers.
But Urban Garden is not just committed to supporting our mental wellbeing but also to helping the environment too, with initiatives to reduce single-use plastics that include offering refillable (non-peat-based) compost bags and making use of posipots for taking new plants home.
Urban Garden is still in its early stages. There are also plans for public workshops and a café on site.
If you’re curious about how gardening, particularly in a community, can help you feel better, check this one out.
For Awe and Wonder: Persephone Books
New to Bath, the charming Persephone Books brings some of its former home base of Bloomsbury to the city. This intimate bookstore showcases the independent Persephone publishing house founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman – which The Observer has referred to as “The nearest thing British publishing has to a cult”.
Displayed across its shelves are each of Persephone’s 139 signature grey-jacked books by twentieth-century female writers, many from the mid-century and long-neglected. New to these writers, we found our way through with the helpful descriptors, some written by contemporary female cultural figures. Just choosing is a process of discovery, with short stories, memories, diaries, poems and cookbooks from writers you may already be acquainted with such as Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own, no. 134) and Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Making of a Marchioness, no. 29), to many that may be new to you such as D.E. Stevenson (Miss Bundle’s Book, no.81) and Oriel Malet (Marjory Fleming, no. 17). A popular favourite is Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (book no. 21) by Winifred Watson.
Seek out the table of books they wished they had published: including recent BBC hit The Pursuit of Love. With the office right there at the back of the store, you can absorb the magic of book-making, while in the space upstairs there are plans for programs to support local writers.
There’s a palpable sense of reclaiming at Persephone – of the books that were almost lost, of lives often rushed through and here slowed down, of a love of reading often pushed aside by aimless scrolling. It marks a coming home for writers, the lives they trace, and for women’s creativity itself. Also for ourselves as we’re inspired to sit with a good book over a mug of tea.
Additionally, try: Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights | Topping and Company | Magalleria
For Creativity and Culture: A Yarn Story
A University of Kentucky report recently claimed that our emotional well-being and self-esteem can be boosted by just one craft session. Inspired, we headed to A Yarn Story, on Bath’s artisan Walcot Street, which has been making space for the craft of knitting and crocheting since 2015.
Founded by west coaster Carmen Schmidt (from Oregon by way of Germany and Ireland), the store offers thoughtfully sourced patterns, tools and yarns, with many natural, hand-dyed, and even organic (Garthenor) on offer. It's designed for both the novice and the seasoned maker in mind with workshops and events to bring like-minded people together and refine skills (when times don’t allow for in-person there are virtual knit-nights).
Its fan base regularly celebrates this store as one of the best yarn shops in the country. We love it for its friendly service, with staff enthusiastically sharing ideas for projects and excitement over textures and colours.
On a recent visit, we were guided to the kits of Toft as a good starter project. We also discovered Nordic Knit Life magazine Laine and 52 Weeks of Shawls while there. One to seek out if you’re looking to bring more creativity into your life. In the words of Maya Angelou — once quoted on the store’s windows — ‘You can’t use up creativity…the more you use, the more you have.
Additionally, try: Meticulous Ink
Local to Bath? Let us know where we’ve missed? Where would you add to this Prescription for Everyday Life? Tell us the thoughtful places in Bath that help you find your way in the world.
In Part 2, we’ll cover our favourite places in Bath for Spirituality & Meaning, for Mind & Body Connection, for Untethering, and for Connection & Community. Have ideas for where we should feature in these categories? Reach out to us here.
And if you’re interested in writing about your city, complete this form and tell us where you seek out.
