The figure is in two parts,and the head, older than the body, was easily detached. From this Janice Tindall removed a layer of recent blue oil paint presumably depicting woad. Under this was a series of repainted layers flesh coloured. I found red paint in the recesses of the robes. I extended these areas with a casein based paint so that it was clearly obvious from across the Kings Bath . The niche was conserved using the lime method and I made the new apex stone where the crutches of the healed.used to be hung. This I capped with the cast lead cover dated 1982. Janice Tindall repainted the lettered panel beneath the niche that reads BLADUD SON OF LUDHUDIBRAS/EIGHTH KING OF THE BRITANS/FROM BRUTE, A GREAT PHILOSOPHER/ AND MATHEMATICIAN BRED AT/ATHENS AND RECORDED THE FIRST/DISCOVERER AND FOUNDER OF/THESE BATHS EIGHT HUNDRED/SIXTY THREE YEARS BEFORE/CHRIST. THAT IS TWO THOUSAND/FIVE HUNDRED SIXTY TWO YEARS/TO THE PRESENT YEAR 1699/ Bottom left: Drawing by Thomas Johnson shows the King’s Bath in 1675. Bladud’s niche supporting abandoned crutches seen on the left. Above. Excavation of the Queens Bath 1879 note the rear of Bladud’s niche and the
In its final form Bladud was sent by his father to be educated in the liberal arts in Athens. After his father’s death he returned, with four philosophers, and founded a university at Stamford in Lincolnshire, which flourished until it was suppressed by Saint Augustine of Canterbury on account of heresies which were taught there. Supposedly he ruled for twenty years from 863 BC or perhaps 500 BC, in which time he built Kaerbadum or Caervaddon (Bath), creating the hot springs there by the use of magic. He dedicated the city to the goddess Athena or Minerva, and in honour of her lit undying fires, whose flames turned to balls of stone as they grew low, with new ones springing up in their stead: an embellishment of an account from the fourth-century writer Solinus of the use of local coal on the altars of her temple
