Ruins of Bath

"Wondrous is its wallstone: fates have broken, have shattered the city, the work of giants is decaying. The roofs are fallen, the towers in ruins, the towers with barred doors destroyed, frost on the mortar, the ramparts down, fallen, with age under-eaten."

-- A translation from the Old English of a fragment of poetry written in the ninth century CE. Quoted in England: A Concise History by F.E. Halliday