Andrew Swift explores the often-forgotten history of spa culture in Georgian Bristol, uncovering a time when Bristol’s Hotwells rivalled the hot springs of Bath.
Bath’s recent UNESCO accreditation as one of the great spas of Europe is yet another reminder of the city’s 18th-century pre-eminence as a fashionable resort. What is generally forgotten is that 18th-century tourists would have been as likely to head to Bristol for a romantic spa break. Georgian Bristol had a spa culture that was no less vibrant – albeit on a somewhat smaller scale – than that of its more famous rival, and, although few reminders of it survive, it had a major impact on the city’s development.
The odds were against it from the start, though. Whereas Bath’s hot springs rise in the middle of the city built around them, Bristol’s more tepid spring – a mere 240C – surfaced in the muddy reaches of the Avon at the foot of precipitous cliffs a mile or more from the city.
“Like the water of Bath”
It had probably been known about since the middle ages, with passing mariners allegedly imbibing it to ward off scurvy. It was first recorded, though, around 1480 by William of Worcester as “a fountain … towards the bottom of the river” from which issued a spring “as warm as milk or like the water of Bath”. Before long, its waters were being touted as the panacea for a variety of ailments. When a visitor scrambled down “near 200 slippery steps” to reach it in 1634, he was amazed to find that “when the tide is gone [there] never wants good store of company to wash in this well, and to drink of that warm and medicinable water”. Access problems were solved in 1662 when a carriage drive was built along the gorge, and after Catherine of Braganza, wife of James II, drove along it in 1677 to take the waters the seal was set on its reputation. In 1695, the Merchant Venturers, Lords of the Manor of Clifton, leased the site to a consortium to build “a convenient pump room and lodging house” and “walks to shelter and entertain visitors”. One of the earliest visitors to the new Hotwell House – as it was known – was that redoubtable traveller Celia Fiennes who found the water “as warm as new milk and much of that sweetness” – in contrast to the hot springs at Bath which she described as tasting “like the water that boils eggs.”
For those who couldn’t get to Hotwell House, the water was bottled, one of the first instances – if not the first – of what would become a global industry. In 1724, Daniel Defoe wrote that Bristol’s glasshouses produced “vast numbers of bottles … for sending the water of the Hotwell not only over England but all over the world”. By 1751, when the poet laureate, William Whitehead, published his Hymn to the Nymph of the Bristol Spring, the spa rivalled that at Bath, and many visitors to Bath also made the trip down the Avon to Bristol. Among them were the Duke of York, who visited in 1767, and the novelist Tobias Smollett, who in 1771 featured it in The Adventures of Humphry Clinker.
Matthew Bramble, one of the characters in Smollett’s novel, was less than impressed by his visit, declaring that “the man deserves to be fitted with a cap and bells, who for such a paultry advantage as this spring affords, sacrifices his precious time … and exposes himself to the dirt, the stench, the chilling blasts, and perpetual rains, that render this place to me intolerable.” His niece, Lydia, took a very different view, writing to a friend that, “for variety, we go down to the Nymph of Bristol spring, where the company is assembled before dinner; so good natured, so free, so easy; and there we drink the water so clear, so pure, so mild, so charmingly maukish. There the fun is so chearful and reviving; the weather so soft, the walk so agreeable; the prospect so amusing; and the ships and boats going up and down the river, close under the windows of the Pump Room, afford such an enchanting variety of moving pictures as require a much abler pen than mine to describe”. The heroine of Fanny Burney’s Evelina, published in 1778, echoed her sentiments, describing it to be “a most delightful spot: the prospect is beautiful, the air pure, and the weather very favourable to invalids”.
Hotwells becomes a hotspot
By now, despite its reviving waters coming from a single spring, the Hotwell was invariably referred to as the Hotwells, which obviously sounded more impressive – and there weren’t any trade description acts to worry about back then. Its success encouraged development nearby. Dowry Square, Dowry Parade, Hope Square, Albemarle Row and St Vincent’s Parade were built to provide lodgings for fashionable visitors. Two sets of assembly rooms opened, along with taverns, coffee houses and even the short-lived New Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on the banks of the Avon. Balls and public breakfasts were regular features, and in 1785 a Master of Ceremonies was appointed. Two years later, a new colonnaded promenade of little shops opened beside Hotwell House. This was its high summer. In 1793, JC Ibbetson, in his Picturesque guide to Bath, Bristol hot-wells, the river Avon, and the adjacent country, wrote that “the wells have the necessary attendant of such a place, gaiety. The resort to them is great, and during the summer months a band of music attends every morning.”
But already the storm clouds were gathering. Despite its popularity, it was clear that the spa needed upgrading if it was to survive, but the work proved so expensive that charges had to be hiked up to recoup the cost. A devastating loss of business followed. In 1816, just 23 years after Ibbetson’s guide appeared, Dr Andrew Carrick, a Clifton physician, declared that “it has the silence of the grave, to which it seems the inlet. Not a carriage to be seen once an hour, and scarcely more frequently does a solitary invalid approach the neglected spring.” In an attempt to revive its fortunes, the old pump room was demolished in 1822 to make way for a new access road and a larger pump room “in Tuscan style”, with a suite of baths. Although it enjoyed a modest success, it lasted only 45 years before being demolished in 1867 to widen the river and improve navigation.
There was a final attempt at revival of the spa’s fortunes, in 1894, when Sir George Newnes opened the Clifton Pump Room and Spa overlooking the gorge. The Clifton Rocks Railway – another of Sir George’s projects – had opened a year earlier, and the machinery which operated it was used to pump up “the identical water from the same spring which years ago performed cures of a marvellous character”. No expense was spared, but the new spa was destined to last for only 28 years before being closed and used as a cinema. It later became a ballroom but since the 1960s has lain boarded up and disused.
Today, spa culture is more popular than ever, with numerous venues in Bristol – including the historic Clifton Lido – offering a range of spa packages. The days when Bristol’s Hotwells rivalled the hot springs of Bath, though, seem lost beyond recall. All that is left to remind us of its glittering career is the truncated colonnade of shops on Hotwell Road and the abandoned shell of Sir George Newnes’ pump room on Princes Lane. But it has a more important legacy as well, for without it Hotwells’ Georgian terraces – which set in train the development of western Clifton – would almost certainly not have been built.
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