Europe pulls the plug on Harrogate ‘healing’ water

HUNDREDS of thousands have drunk from Harrogate’s ‘ healing’ mineral waters. But thanks to a new European health and safety directive, visitors to the spa town are now banned from taking the merest sip.

Council officials have been forced to turn off taps after the sulphur water – once said by the Victorians to cure ailments ranging from gout to lumbago – was graded as ‘unwholesome’.

Even if they turn them back on, warning signs will have to be put up encouraging tourists to smell rather than swallow the water. Tests at the Royal Pump Room Museum have been carried out in response to EU directive 98/83/EC concerning water quality for human consumption.

Until now, visitors to the museum have been able to use an outside tap to taste the water to experience what attracted the Victorians.

Nigel Avison, Harrogate council’s director of development services, said: ‘In simple terms, the water contains certain elements which have the potential to cause harm to health if consumed in sufficient quantity.

‘There is no suggestion that mere contact with the water or use in other ways such as in soap or as a skin preparation, poses any significant risk.’

He added: ‘Public access to the water at the Royal Pump Room Museum has been temporarily suspended to allow the council to consider the results from recent scientific tests.’

The pump room sits on top of a well with the highest concentration of sulphur water in Europe. The first wells in the town date back to the late 16th century, but it was during the Victorian era that ‘taking the waters’ became big business.

Visitors to the spa town boomed from 3,700 in 1842 to 259,000 in 1925. Many were infirm and hoped the water’s properties would heal them. Visitors included Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Charles Dickens.

Local Tory MP Andrew Jones hit out at the drinking ban. ‘I cannot believe this EU regulation was meant to apply to water that is part of a one-off historical experience rather than water one would drink on a daily basis for refreshment,’ he said.

Historian Malcolm Neesam said: ‘Generations of Harrogate’s greatest citizens would turn in their graves at the thought that foreign and unelected nosey-parkers could ever be in a position to ban the waters of England’s first and greatest spa.’