Royal Pump Room, Harrogate facts for kids
The Royal Pump Room from the north-west
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| Established | 1953 |
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| Location | Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England |
| Type | Local museum |
| Key holdings | Anubis mask, artefacts and gifts from Russian Royalty. The Holland-Child Collection of predominantly Leeds made Creamware ceramics. Artefacts from Roman, Etruscan, Ancient Greek, Babylonian and South American cultures |
| Collections | Archaeology Social history |
| Collection size | 20,000 items |
| Owner | North Yorkshire Council |
The Royal Pump Room is a special old building in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. Today, it is home to the town's museum, which is run by the North Yorkshire Council. Long ago, it was a place where people came to drink special spa water.
You can find the Royal Pump Room in Crown Place, in the western part of Harrogate town centre. It is right across from the town's Valley Gardens park. The building is bordered by two streets: Crescent Road and Royal Parade. The Pump Room has two main parts: the original stone building from 1842 and a glass extension added in 1913.
This building gave visitors a comfortable place to drink sulphur water. This water was pumped directly from a natural spring called the Old Sulphur Well. It was also a popular spot for people to meet friends and socialize.
Discover the Museum
The Pump Room and its later Annexe were fixed up in the early 1950s. The building first opened as the new town museum in 1953. Today, the Royal Pump Room Museum is owned and run by Harrogate Borough Council.
The museum had big improvements between 1985 and 1987. During this time, many parts of the buildings were restored, including the copper roof of the main building and the Annexe. The Old Sulphur Well's wellhead and the original counter for serving water were also fixed up. The 1980s changes also created new areas for displays and better facilities for visitors.
Harrogate's Spa Story
Most of the museum tells the story of Harrogate as a spa town. People came here to rest and get better from illnesses. The council now owns about 20,000 items in the museum's collection. The first gifts and items came from local private collections, some as early as the 1850s.
Among the displays about Harrogate as a spa town are recreated treatment rooms. These rooms use original items to show what Hydrotherapy facilities were like. You can see rooms that look like the Vichy bath rooms from the nearby Royal Baths. There's also a wheeled mahogany bath that was used for sulphurous peat baths. It was found in the 1970s after being left for many years near the Royal Baths.
The museum also has a 19th-century Bath chair. This chair was used by Mr. Robinson, a bath chair owner, until he retired in 1931. These wheeled chairs were common in Harrogate in the 1800s and even in the 1920s. Visitors could rent them, and "bath chair men" would push them to hotels and spa buildings.
Bottled Water and Old Clothes
Recently, some old glass bottles were given to the museum. These "torpedo" shaped bottles say "bottled at the Royal Pump Room, Harrogate." Very few of these unusual Victorian bottles still exist. They are now part of a display about the Pump Room's bottling room. This shows that the Pump Room was important for business too. Strong Sulphur Water was bottled and sent all over the country as medicine.
The museum also shows off old costumes from its large collection of clothing. In 2014, dresses from the museum were in an exhibition called Classical Dress Timeless Style. This show explored how old Greek and Roman styles influenced fashion in the 1800s and 1900s.
Ancient World Treasures
Another important part of the museum's displays are items from the Ancient World. The museum is known for its Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek artefacts. These were collected by local people like Robert Ogden and the Kent family.
The Egyptology collection includes a well-preserved sarcophagus (a stone coffin). It also has a special cartonnage mask of Anubis, which is a unique item. You can also see Stele gravestones, very old pottery from before the pharaohs, and other items from later periods of Ancient Egypt.
Special Exhibitions
The museum often has special exhibitions. These use items from the council's collection and things borrowed from other places. In 2014, there was a Great War exhibition. It showed many items and personal memories from local people who fought in the war.
In late 2013, the Royal Pump Room showed some of the costumes from the TV show Downton Abbey. This exhibition was very popular.
Fun for Kids and Families
The museum welcomes many school groups from around Yorkshire. It has a good education program for different subjects taught in the National Curriculum for England. The museum offers workshops on topics like Egyptology, old toys, and local history. The nearby Mercer Art Gallery has a special room for school activities. Sometimes, actors in costumes visit to teach schoolchildren about history.
For families, there is a children's activity area. This area has coloring sheets, activity backpacks you can borrow, and quiz sheets. During the summer holidays, there are special sessions where kids can handle objects and other fun learning activities.
History of the Pump Room
Discovery of Harrogate's Special Waters
The Tewit Well on the Stray was found by William Slingsby in 1596.
By 1626, people were already using Harrogate's Tewit Well waters for health. A doctor from York, Edmund Deane, wrote about it. He called the well "The English Spa." He compared it to Spa in Belgium, where people also drank spring water for health.
The Old Sulphur Well Site
The natural spring under the Pump Room has the most sulphur of all Harrogate's springs. The water from the Old Sulphur Well was called Strong Sulphur Water. This helped tell it apart from other sulphur waters in town.
Betty Lupton (born around 1760) served Strong Sulphur Water from a well for about 60 years. This was at the same spot where the Pump Room is now. She stopped working in 1843, just as the Pump Room was finished. She was known as 'The Queen of the Well'. This title was given to several women who served water at the Old Sulphur Well. These water servers were chosen and crowned every May.
Today, visitors to the museum can look down into the basement. There, they can see an old stone well-head from the 1700s for the Old Sulphur Well. It has a unique design with arches and a tent-like roof. This roof was probably to protect the marble basin underneath.
In 1986, another old well shaft was found and opened again. It was also thought to be from the 1700s. This happened when workers were fixing up the Royal Pump Room museum.
The First Building (1842)
The building with eight sides was designed by Isaac Thomas Shutt. His family owned the Old Swan Hotel. It was built to hold 150 people. The project cost about £2,249 in 1842. This was a lot of money back then.
The Pump Room was the first project for the new Harrogate Improvement Commissioners. Their goal was to build a proper home for the Old Sulphur Well. The building that was there before was taken down and moved to the Tewit Well.
The Pump Room has four parts that stick out with windows and Corinthian pillars. On one wall, there's a panel with the town's Latin motto: Arx celebris fontibus. This means "A citadel noted for its springs." The copper roof has an "ogee" dome shape. In the middle of the roof, there's a "lantern" feature that lets light into the building.
Drinking the Waters
In the Pump Room's busiest times, visitors would arrive early in the morning. They came from 7 AM to about 9:30 AM to drink one or two glasses of water. They did this before breakfast.
Inside the building, they would pay an attendant for their sulphur water. The water was served in glasses from a wooden counter. Visitors had to pay to drink the water inside. For one person, it cost 1 shilling to drink sulphur water for a week. A family could drink the waters for the same time for 4 shillings.
However, a law from 1841 said that Strong Sulphur Water had to be free for those who couldn't afford it. To follow this law, the Pump Room had an outside tap. Anyone could use this tap for free at any time. After 9:30 AM, attendants stopped serving water inside. From then on, the outside tap was the only source of water. In the early days, an attendant watched over the tap.
This tap still exists today and still works. However, it's not recommended to drink the water now because of health risks.
The Pump Room Becomes Popular
When the Pump Room was very popular, music shows were often held inside to entertain visitors.
People from all walks of life traveled from different parts of Great Britain and even Europe. They came to drink the water. In the 1800s, sulphur water was thought to help with illnesses like gout and lumbago. Drinking the water at the Royal Pump Room was a key part of what became known as "The Harrogate cure."
During their stay, guests also visited Harrogate's Royal Baths. There, they had other treatments like hot mineral water baths and mud baths. Rest, exercise, and relaxation were also important parts of the Harrogate cure.
More Visitors to Harrogate Spa
The number of people drinking Harrogate's spa waters grew quickly in the mid-1800s. For example, in 1842, about 3,778 visitors came to drink the water. By 1867, this number was 11,626. At its peak in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Pump Room saw about 15,000 visitors each year.
The 1913 Annexe
Because Harrogate's spa waters were so popular, the Pump Room needed to be bigger. By the 1900s, the Royal Pump Room was often too crowded. A small temporary building was first put up next to the 1842 building. But this didn't solve the problem.
After much discussion, Harrogate Corporation decided to add a permanent extension. This new annexe was designed by Leonard Clarke (architect) and built around 1912–13. Clarke's design was mostly glass and had a roof with fancy copper "fishtail" tiles. These tiles matched the original building's copper roof.
David Burnett, who was the Lord Mayor of London at the time, opened the annexe on June 7, 1913. Sadly, just a year after it opened, World War I began. This caused a big drop in visitors to Harrogate. The Pump Room never got back to its pre-war visitor numbers.
Later Years and Closure
Even though Harrogate had many visitors in 1925 who came to drink the spa waters, the Royal Pump Room and other wells became less popular. This happened as the time between the two World Wars went on. The Great Depression also affected visitor numbers. Also, new ideas in medicine and changes in social habits meant fewer people came to "take the waters."
However, in August 1939, just weeks before World War II started, the Pump Room was still busy. Roads outside were closed in the mornings so guests could safely cross with their water glasses. Newspaper sellers brought carts of newspapers to sell to customers.
These scenes show that even in 1939, the Royal Pump Room was still an important place. It is believed that the Pump Room closed around the start of World War II. This might have been because the government ordered public buildings where many people gathered to close.
After the war, even though some visitors still liked the Pump Room, the decision was made to stop pumping water. The building was used as a storage place and sometimes as a cafe. But by the early 1950s, it was decided that the Pump Room would become Harrogate's new museum.
Famous Visitors
Many famous people visited the Royal Pump Room.
- Charles Dickens visited in 1858. He wrote that Harrogate was "the queerest place, with the strangest people in it, leading the oddest lives of dancing, newspaper-reading and dining."
- In 1911, Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, who was the wife of Nicholas II of Russia, visited the Pump Room.
- On December 2, 1987, the Duke of Gloucester officially reopened the Royal Pump Room Museum. A stone tablet on the wall remembers this event.
- In 2013, Harrogate-born actor Jim Carter (who played Carson in Downton Abbey) gave a talk at the museum. He spoke about his life and acting roles.
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