History

The Royal Pump Rooms opened in late June 1814. By this time, Leamington Priors, as the town was called then, had rapidly grown from a small village to a fashionable spa resort. The Royal Pump Rooms was the fifth of six bath houses to be built in Leamington, and the only one north of the river Leam. Construction began in 1812 on land belonging to Bertie Bertie Greathead, a local landowner whose family wealth was derived from a sugar plantation, worked by enslaved people, on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. Greatheed was joined in the venture by the bankers John Tomes and John Parkes and J.W. Tancred. The building was designed by C.S. Smith of London and cost £25- 30,000. The central feature was a Pump Room (now the Assembly Room), which was 106 feet long by 30 feet high (30 m by 9 m). It was surrounded on three sides by a colonnade. Two wings, 30 feet long and 20 feet high (or 9metres by 6 metres), gave access to 20 baths providing hot, cold, tepid, vapour, plunging and shower facilities. Men and women used separate entrances and different baths; the women at the south end (nearest the old town) and men at the north. Engineers Matthew Boulton and James Watt installed a two-horsepower steam-engine to pump the water from the spa well to feed the baths. This was the first application of steam power to pump mineral water in England. Shortly after the building was finished the Pump Rooms Gardens were laid out adjacent to the building as a space for patrons to take exercise. By 1816 such was the success of the baths that they had been renamed ‘The Royal Pump Room Baths’.

The doctors of the town drew up strict rules for taking the waters, which involved: regular drinking of the saline waters, a strict regime of regular exercise (usually walking), a restricted diet of plain food, and a stay of at least 3-4 weeks during the season. Leamington’s spa water was thought to be effective against many conditions including scrofula, gout, kidney, liver and stomach complaints, rheumatism and ill humours. For the wealthy patrons who attended the Royal Pump Rooms music played an essential part of their treatment programme. The balls held in the Assembly Room were part of the town’s busy social calendar.

The splendour of the Royal Pump Rooms, the high calibre of the doctors in the town and the proliferation of quality attractions and amusements all contributed towards the massive success of Leamington as a spa town in the 1820s and 30s. However, by the end of the decade the resort was facing financial disaster, which prompted the Master of Ceremonies, Major Abaithar Hawkes to petition the new Queen Victoria to grant the town a charter allowing it to adopt the name ‘Royal Leamington Spa’. This did little to halt the decline and the bath houses closed one-by-one. In 1861 a syndicate of local businessmen, headed by Dr Henry Jephson and John Haddon, established the Leamington Royal Pump Room Company Ltd to save the building. New facilities were introduced to appeal to Victorian tastes, including a Turkish bath suite and swimming pool. At the same time the cottage roof was replaced with a new roof, tower and pediment, and the colonnade was remodelled.

In 1875 the building passed to the Leamington Corporation, which almost immediately opened up Linden Walk and the Pump Rooms Gardens to the general public. Ten years later, a loan from the government of £2,000 paid for a new suite of baths, including reclining baths and a deep immersion bath with lifts and chairs. A new swimming pool design by the borough engineer William de Normanville was added, featuring an impressive roof incorporating two sprays which showered the bathers below. This larger swimming pool was reserved for men, while women used the smaller and older pool. Water for both pools came from the river Leam, which was mechanically filtered and chemically purified before the pools were filled. In the winter months the large pool was boarded over to become the winter hall where exhibitions and dances were held.

In 1899 Charles Ravenhill, a masseuse and medical electrician from Bath, came to manage the Royal Pump Rooms. He was assisted by his wife Sarah, who became the masseuse here, and his daughter Ethel Maude who was first a swimming mistress and later bath nurse masseuse. From his arrival in Leamington until his retirement in 1924, Ravenhill modernised the establishment through the introduction of new treatments including those from other European spa resorts such as Nauheim baths and Vichy douches. The new light therapies introduced at the time were among those used to treat injured soldiers who were sent to Leamington for treatment and recuperation during the First World War. Ravenhill’s successor, Wilfred James Leist oversaw the completion of the modernisation programme in 1926. Tt cost £26,000 and included the addition of an annexe on the north side of the building. This mirrored the south annexe, added in 1910 as a patients’ lounge.

From 1948 treatment at the Royal Pump Rooms became available under the newly formed National Health Service. There then followed further changes: the flag tower and pediment were removed from the roof, and the smaller pool was partly filled and a ramp installed to create a hydrotherapy pool. In 1964 Miss Anne Golland joined the staff as Deputy Superintendent Physiotherapist and later Superintendent Physiotherapist. She oversaw extensive changes to the treatments being offered, moving from patients passively receiving treatments to being pro-active in their rehabilitation. During this period, patients were usually referred by their GPs or from nearby hospitals like Warneford.  The assembly room and conservatory continued to be used for entertainments and, along with the Turkish and slipper baths, were managed by the amenities department of the local council.

By 1988 the Royal Pump Rooms was the only spa in Britain still giving NHS treatments in the original building and still using the waters. However, the need to improve facilities and maintain the Royal Pump Rooms was a growing concern and the future of the building was in serious doubt. The Turkish bath and slipper baths closed in the mid-1970s, the swimming pool closed in 1989, and the hydrotherapy and physiotherapy department closed in 1990. Some physiotherapy facilities were re-instated for a few years, but this was the last time that hydrotherapy treatments were carried out in the building.

Between 1997 and 1999 the building was carefully restored to create a new cultural destination for the 21st century. Along with Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, the building also houses the town’s library, a café, box office and visitor information point and Warwick District Council’s frontline services.

Image: A black and white photograph of the De Normanville swimming pool, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa.  © Courtesy of the Leamington Spa Courier