Bathing was an important part of Roman social life as well as a way of getting clean. All Roman towns had public baths and some of the grander houses had their own. The baths were places to relax and socialise as well as get clean. The Romans brought the custom of bathing with them to Britain: most Roman army fortresses had bath-houses.

In the late 3rd and early 4th centuries AD, many Romano-British aristocrats built grand country villas. A large number of these villas in the south of England had bath-complexes decorated with mosaic floors and with plastered and painted walls. The floors of the rooms were raised on brick pillars so that heat from a furnace circulated underneath. This must have been very welcome in the British climate.

Taking a bath was a form of recreation. Bathers could eat and drink, or play board games as they made their way from warm room, to hot room, to hot plunge, back to warm room and finished off with a cold plunge. To get clean, bathers rubbed themselves with oil (there was no soap), sweated the dirt out in the hot rooms and then scraped the oil and dirt off their skins with curved implements called strigils.