Hope Springs Eternal
The Victorians flocked to Harrogate’s Valley Gardens to take the pungent waters, and now a restoration project hopes to raise the level of excitement again. Roy Hampson follows his nose . . .
Harrogate Valley Gardens revived
THE magnificent Valley Gardens are located in the heart of Harrogate and are now English Heritage Grade Ii-listed. The gardens contain beautiful historic buildings, such as the Sun Pavilion and Colonnades, which sit alongside a wide variety of shrub, flower and herbaceous beds.
These include alpine rarities in spring, a romantic rhododendron dell, seasonal bedding displays and a magnificent dahlia border which blooms in late summer. Sloping lawns south of the colonnades are laid out as rose gardens with shaped beds.
The gardens also host outdoor games facilities, a children’s play area, a skate park and the Magnesia
Well Café, located close to a lake.
For music lovers, concerts are performed by brass bands and groups from Harrogate and beyond, on the gardens’ extensive open-air bandstand on Sunday afternoons in the summer.
Within the gardens is a small, gothic-style building with a pointed roof. Built in 1858, it is known as the Old Magnesia Well Pump Room.
Until a few years ago it was barely visible, surrounded by thick undergrowth, neglected and largely unnoticed even by the most historically savvy Harrogate folk.
Visitors to the gardens could have easily mistaken the building for a public toilet or a garden shed, but it should really rank with the same importance as the town’s other landmarks, such as the Royal Hall Theatre or the Turkish Baths, for the existence of the Pump Room is the very reason that the Valley Gardens are here today.
They were originally designed to surround the building.
Built on open ground known as the Bog Field, this compact area is a wonder of the natural world.
Thirty-six of Harrogate’s 88 mineral wells are here, of which no two are alike. It’s the biggest number of natural mineral springs occurring in the smallest space in the world.
The waters are magmatic or plutonic in origin. They come from an ancient geological sea far below the earth’s surface, rising up through the faults in the carboniferous rock, having flowed
beneath the Earth for 20,000 years.
When first discovered, the waters simply ran into the surrounding ground, creating a marshy area. Visitors brought along their own ladles and cups to scoop up the water or put it directly on their skin.
During the Georgian period the increasing numbers of visitors who arrived from all over England to taste the Harrogate waters, coupled with the rising knowledge and fear of disease, led to four spring wellheads being built in 1772.
From the 1800s, more spa buildings were built to meet Victorian demand. These included the Royal Pump Room – a hexagonal building outside the entrance of Valley Gardens.
To meet the needs of the poor, who also required access to the sulphur water, a free tap was provided outside the building and still remains today (though I wouldn’t recommend drinking from it).
Rich and fashionable Victorians spent hours each day queuing at the Magnesia Well Pump Room’s small entrance to sample the unique, if not very appealing, health-giving spring water.
Known as “the cure”, it claimed to heal everything from lumbago to gout. It smelled vile – of rotten eggs – and would leave patrons feeling rather sick afterwards.
Nevertheless the Victorians would clamour for more. The water contains a level of minerals thought to be beneficial to health, and was believed to help neutralise acid in the body and strengthen teeth and bones.
It became a popular routine to drink one or two glasses between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. each morning.
Along with its waterside walks, amongst flowers and trees, the gardens developed into a beautiful place for Victorians to promenade and take exercise.
For visitors to Harrogate in those days this was all part of their health regime, along with drinking the mineral spring waters.
This was also a good excuse for a little early-morning socialising. Afterwards, the chronically sick would head to the nearby Spa baths for further treatment while others would go shopping or sightseeing or attend private parties.
Photographs of the gardens taken during the early part of the 20th century testify to the enormous popularity of the area, with crowds of people gathered around the tea room, boating lake, and bandstand.
The popularity of the spa was not to last for ever, though. The introduction of the NHS in 1948 saw medical
treatment available to all and the need for “the cure” was much diminished.
One by one the wells fell into decay and even the hexagonal Royal Pump Room closed, reopening in the 1950s as a museum.
In 2012 visitors were told only to smell the healing water of Harrogate after EU rules banded it a health risk. This prompted local historian Malcolm Neesam to comment in the “Harrogate Advertiser” in 2017.
Our forefathers would turn in their graves if they could see the warning sign which discourages people from tasting the water.
A volunteer group called Friends of the Valley Gardens, who work with Harrogate Borough Council to conserve, enhance and promote the gardens, have been raising money to put new sparkle into the old Magnesia Well Pump Room.
With surrounding landscape work, which involved extensive clearing and replanting to create a new peat garden and a sensory garden, now complete, the Pump Room opened in October 2015 as an information and education centre, describing the history of the gardens and spa to visitors.
For eight years now, towards the end of June, a special Valley Gardens 1940s-themed Open Day has been staged as a memorable fund-raising occasion, which has grown in popularity to attract more than 27,000 visitors each year.
Harrogate’s residents go to great lengths to make this as authentic and true to the 1940s as possible, by turning up fully kitted out in 1940s-style costume.
Along with military and civilian vehicles there is dancing, jiving and jitterbugging to the strains of Glenn Miller and possibly a morale-boosting speech from Sir Winston Churchill.
The occasion has become a firm fixture of the Valley Gardens calendar, >
with all monies raised (around £82,000 so far) going towards the upkeep of the Pump Room and other conservation projects in the gardens.
The latest Friends project is restoring a Japanese garden, which began in 2017. The garden was originally created in 1930 and over the years its Japanese character had declined and been virtually forgotten.
It was finished last year and now, in spring, camellias, azaleas and cherry blossom bloom. In summer you will see irises sitting along a tiny stream and in autumn the colours of maple leaves dance in the wind, with bamboo, pine trees and flashes of yellow from mahonia flowers taking over in winter.
The New Zealand Gardens recall the dark days of the war, honouring 23 New Zealand airmen stationed in Harrogate who lost their lives.
After the war, exchanges of native plants between the City of Wellington and Harrogate resulted in an area designated and laid out with the new plant material. In every season, and even during bad weather, Harrogate Valley Gardens is a popular destination for visitors and locals alike. The next fund-raising 1940s day to be staged at Harrogate’s Valley Gardens is Sunday 23 June, 2019. www.harrogatefestivals.co.uk Harrogate International Festivals 32 Cheltenham Parade, Harrogate HG1 1DB. Tel: 01423 562303 E-mail: kate@harrogate-festival.org.uk