The Bath Literary and Scientific Institution (the ‘Royal’ part came later) was founded in 1824, but was a direct descendant of Bath societies going back to the 1770s. Our first home was a purpose-built building near Bath Abbey which made way for a 20th-Century road scheme, and we now live in Queen Square, on a site originally the home of Dr William Oliver, inventor of the Bath Oliver biscuit and a key figure in Bath’s early 18th-Century development.
