The 2025 Jane Austen Festival took over Bath on Saturday with the annual Grand Regency Costumed Promenade. Two thousand elegant attendees paraded through the city’s famous Georgian streets, like time-travellers come to remind us of Bath’s heyday. Admittedly, Bath’s historic visitors in those days didn’t march en masse, but still, the city’s grand architecture was built as a theatrical backdrop for fashionable life and promenading. So this is Georgian Bath as it was conceived and would have been.
Even for non-participants and passing locals, it’s great fun to see the Jane Austen and Regency-era lovers enjoying the event. The festival celebrates Jane Austen’s times as much as the author herself, and those who attend the festival have many different passions and reasons for being here. From hand-stitching authentic historical fashions to enjoying canal cruises and from discussing novels to fencing, there is a lot on the programme. At the weekend there were three balls a day, all expensive and all sold out.
Visitors come from all around the world, and it is wonderful and remarkable to witness how the Festival has grown. As you can read in my article about Jane Austen and Bath, when I was growing up here, the author’s relationship with the town was always downplayed. I find it hugely satisfying to see how this has changed. And whatever anyone may think about aspects of these celebrations, whatever Jane Austen may have felt if she could look out of the windows of her former lodging at 25 Gay Street and see the parade marching by (great amusement? possibly horror? embarrassment?), it is chiefly heartwarming and inspiring to see the author celebrated like this, and to to see so many visitors enjoying themselves so unabashedly.
If you’re in Bath on the festival’s opening weekend it’s a dramatic sight to watch the lengthy costumed procession with its marching military bands. There are almost as many people in costume among the admiring crowds, too. Some of the costumes since 2020 are rather more Bridgerton than Austen (think tiaras and shiny polyester) but the Netflix series has brought whole new young demographics to Bath and maybe Bridgerton cosplay is a gateway drug, with serious fiction and uncomfortable historically-accurate undies further down the line.
I enjoy being in Bath for the festival week not just to appreciate the spectacle of the Promenade but to have fun spotting ladies and gentlemen in gorgeous historic costumes around the streets. Browsing in M&S, queueing at a cashpoint, taking a walk into the countryside – I just love these gracefully-clad, colourful reminders of Bath’s past bringing history alive in our modern world.
The festival is a good time to visit even if you’ve missed your chance to attend the sold-out ticketed events. As well as enjoying the costumes and friendly ambience, there are various off-shoot events taking place and some free entertainment/education. Last year and this year I enjoyed visiting the Military Encampment outside the Holburne Museum, listening to fascinating talks about the role of women in the army and the work of ordinary women in the Georgian/Regency eras (leech collecting?!) as well as talks on uniforms and other aspects of army history.
As Saturday evening approached and the Regency promenaders dispersed to balls and lodgings, Bath’s usual weekend trippers emerged: at half-past five I passed hen-do women sprawled drunk on a pavement wearing fairy wings and loudly, aggressively bantering with a passing stag-do, and I felt glad the Jane Austen Festival had brought a better-dressed, peaceful and more genteel atmosphere to the streets for a couple of weekends. Plus much more effort with costumes.
- More about the Jane Austen Festival
- Jane Austen Festival official website
- Jane Austen Festival 2023 photos
- Jane Austen and Bath
- A Persuasion walk around Bath
- Persuasion (1995) filming locations
- Persuasion (Netflix) filming locations
