Down the Garden Path: Privies in and Around Bristol and Bath

Vivid, anecdotal, gruesome, crammed with outlandish information, shamingly funny Down the Garden Path is a descriptive and pictorial tribute to the lavatories of yesteryear. It takes us from the highly insanitary Middle Ages to the more comic encounters of recent times. When Linda Hall began her quest for memories about the delights and horrors of the outside privy she was inundated with letters and phone calls. This led her on a privy trail to all parts of the area surrounding Bristol and Bath and the discovery of over eighty-five privies still in situ. One lady remembers her childhood at Little Badminton. On a visit to the privy one day she was terrified to see a snake slither under the door. She jumped up onto the seat , screaming and then dashed indoors where her father asked her what on earth the matter was. When she told her parents, her mother answered that it could have been worse 'you could have gone down into the hole, what with the wormwood in the seat!'