“Water, in an appropriate environment, seems always to have been capable of raising awe in the sub-conscious – even in England, where it often pours on us in all too plentiful abundance. But water gushing up from some unknown underground source often awakens a very natural sense of wonder.”

Peter J Neville Havins (The Spas of England)

What exactly is a spa? The definition has changed slightly since it was first coined to describe a location where a mineral spring arises. At its broadest, the word encompasses a place where any natural treatment, product or philosophy relates to the well-being of body and mind.

Today a spa is more often associated with luxury than with medicine; a place of relaxation and indulgence, such as Bath’s rooftop Thermae Spa, with its striking blend of Georgian architecture and angular modern steel and glass. Indeed, although many spas enjoyed an existence as watering-places throughout the medieval period – and Bath was the centre of the spa business during Roman times – the spa town, generally speaking, is of 18th and 19th century origin, and undoubtedly is one of the great glories of British architecture.

“To understand the remarkable rise of Georgian baths and spas, and the subsequent Victorian hydropathic movement, we must look back at social and religious attitudes to bathing, water and health in earlier times,” says Ian D Rotherham, ecologist and landscape historian. “For long periods, Christianity viewed baths, bathing and especially bathhouses, very negatively. These were places of pleasure and sensuous delight, where good Christians might be tempted to enjoy the pleasure of the flesh.” It was therefore considered both pagan and corrupting, the fourth-century St Jerome even having decreed “He who has bathed in Christ has no need of a second bath”. Small wonder then, according to Prof Rotherham, “Writers were puzzled by Turkish culture, in which people bathed several times a week and washed even their genitals – something considered outrageous to Christians.”

What a grubby lot we were, for we wrongly assumed that clean bodies and especially water were unhealthy; that diseases entered the skin through the pores and therefore to cleanse the skin of dirt left the pores open to infection. With fatal diseases – such as smallpox, malaria, bubonic plague, not to mention syphilis – rife, little wonder then that people viewed bathing and bathhouses with suspicion.

But attitudes change and attitudes to water, health and personal hygiene were no exception. The health-giving qualities of spa waters had long been recognised by some and so the fear of water and disapproval of baths were gradually set aside. Early in the 17th century, curative medicinal properties were claimed for so-called ‘chalybeate’ water (meaning iron-rich) with many authorities – physicians as well as entrepreneurs – promoting its special qualities.

Therefore it soon became fashionable to ‘take the waters’ and not only were special buildings designed for special functions – assembly rooms, gaming rooms, coffee houses and the all-important pump rooms – but also accommodation, by way of town houses for those in pursuit of both health treatment and leisure activities, became necessary. And so belief in the curative properties of water, as well as royal patronage, put spa towns at the cutting edge of leisure development in the 18th and early 19th centuries. There was also a widespread interest in all things classical, and ideas and aspirations were brought home, along with paintings and sculpture, from the fashionable Grand Tours of Europe.

Thus our spa towns set about reinventing themselves. Bath is a fine example, and of four main spa centres in 17th century England, only Bath owed its presence to earlier healing waters. The others were based on waters more recently discovered: Harrogate in North Yorkshire, Epsom in Surrey and Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

Bath
Bath wasn’t always the gracious Georgian city we see today. It was once a city of dark passageways where rough walls were encrusted with dirt and slime and where, at the King’s Bath, men and women would disport themselves in various stages of undress.

Alongside this squalor was the reputation the waters had acquired for fertility and healing and it was Queen Anne who inaugurated Bath’s new age of making regular use of the spa.

However, without the aid of one man, Bath might never have ridden itself of its unsavoury reputation. Arbiter of fashion Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674-1762) became the city’s Master of Ceremonies, an unofficial but influential role. He set about a series of reforms, one of which was the forbidding of wearing of swords or riding boots in the ballroom. Nash converted Bath from raucous to genteel.

If Nash set social standards, architect John Wood (1704-1754) had a vision of a new Roman city, aided by entrepreneur Ralph Allen, owner of the local stone quarries. Wood believed that the proportions of classical architecture were divinely inspired and conceived a city where houses were not set down in isolation but joined in graceful terraces, crescents and squares, all built of pale Bath stone. Under his leadership a fine new city emerged. The building of his masterpiece, the Circus – a circle of 33 houses divided into three sections – began in 1754. Drawing inspiration from the Colosseum, it shows three classical styles of architecture – Doric, Ionic and Corinthian – while the carved frieze represents the arts and the sciences.

Between 1767 and 1774 Bath’s famous Royal Crescent was constructed. Under the direction of John Wood the younger (1728-1782) several different builders and craftsmen completed 30 houses. Set on a hill with lawns to the front, the imposing sweep of the semi-elliptical curve is emphasised by the huge Ionic columns.

Northern England
Spa building covered a period of roughly two centuries, ranging through the Queen Anne period to Palladian, Regency, Victorian Gothic and, in the case of Harrogate, to municipal Gothic. Since the discovery of the first medicinal spring in 1571, Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, evolved in the 18th century into a major health resort for the rich and famous and earned itself the title of ‘the first English Spaw’. The Royal Baths, opened in 1897 by HRH the Duke of Cambridge, were an international bathing and hydrotherapy centre where, in addition to Turkish Baths, more than a dozen other types of treatment were available. The baths’ Moorish design and Islamic arches and screens, walls of vibrant glazed brickwork and terrazzo floors added to its charm and atmosphere.

As with Bath, Buxton, the highest town in England, in Derbyshire’s Peak District, owes its existence to its thermal springs. It was the fifth Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish (1748-1811) who, says architectural historian Rachel Stewart, “set about rivalling Bath commercially and architecturally from around 1779”. His architect was the talented John Carr of York (1723-1807). However, Buxton’s elegant 360ft semicircular Crescent, articulated by giant Doric pilasters standing over an arcaded ground floor and intended to accommodate visitors to the town, does not, according to Stewart, rival the Royal Crescent at Bath which was completed only a few years previously.

Cheltenham and Llandrindod Wells
In the South, Cheltenham’s medicinal springs were discovered in 1716 and the very first Cheltenham Guide (of 1781) described a visit to the town as “a journey of health and pleasure.” In 1788 George III came for five weeks to take the water cure and where royals led the aristocracy and distinguished others – the Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron, and Jane Austen – followed. Over the following decades, the town developed in the architectural style famously popularised by the Prince Regent in Brighton, with sweeping classical terraces and elegant villas set in landscaped estates. Today, Cheltenham is the most complete Regency town.

Although the spa of Llandrindod Wells, in Wales, enjoyed a modest following in the 18th century, its development began in 1865 with the coming of the railway to an area which had previously been isolated. The town was developed, some of it – such as the Market Hall and Assembly Room, built in 1872 – in the Old English half-timber style, a far cry from Regency Cheltenham but imposing nonetheless.

Strathpeffer
Similarly, Strathpeffer in the Scottish Highlands became established as a spa early in the 19th century – the most northerly spa in Europe. The first Pump Room was built in 1819 with a hospital and a hotel following soon after. As with Llandrindod Wells, it was the arrival of the railway in nearby Dingwall in 1862 that enabled the spa to become accessible to a wider audience. The timber Spa Pavilion was built (1880-81) on a grand scale, its design based on the casino in Germany’s spa Baden-Baden, and was officially opened by the Duchess of Sutherland in August 1881.

During the spa season the pavilion provided entertainment day and night. A regular venue for dances and concerts, lectures were also given by Emmeline Pankhurst and Ernest Shackleton.

Novel treatments
It was in the 19th century that spas developed new hydropathic practices, using what Prof Rotherham describes as “novel treatments that drew accusations of quackery”. Such practices included extreme applications of cold water and all-over body wraps, but the deaths of some patients during treatments strengthened the charges of quackery. Whether the treatment or the pre-existing ailments were responsible, that’s difficult to tell, but most had succumbed to heart attacks.

Of all the spa towns, Bath stands alongside Cheltenham Spa and Royal Tunbridge Wells as places once again to see and be seen. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2014 the orange-coloured iron-rich water of the chalybeate spring in Royal Tunbridge Wells, where tourists once paid £1 for a cup, ran dry for what was believed the first time in its 400-year history. The waters have dwindled to a trickle before, but the reason for their current disappearance remains a mystery.

Further Reading
• The Classic English Town House by Rachel Stewart (New Holland, 2006)
• The Spas of England by Peter J Neville Havins (Robert Hale, 1976)
• Spas and Spa Visiting by Ian D Rotherham (Shire Books, 2014)