Great Malvern is a pleasant place. It’s populated by smart-looking ladies with Waitrose carrier bags and relaxed gents sitting around reading hardback books indoors or outdoors according to the weather. It’s long been a place to retire to, whether transitorily or permanently.
“Malvern” is a portmanteau placename for a cluster of small settlements – Great Malvern, Little Malvern, West Malvern, Malvern Wells and Malvern Link – all of which lie at the foot of the Malvern Hills ridge, where ancient Pre-Cambrian rocks provide prolific quantities of pure water from as many as 240 natural springs.
The name itself derives from Old Welsh, meaning “bald hill” and in modern Welsh rendered as moelfryn. This is associated with the name of a Gaelic goddess Malvhina, who was resurrected from obscurity by the local writer and photographer Charles Frederick Grindrod (1847-1910) and is commemorated by Rose Garrard’s 1998 fountain on Belle Vue Terrace.
Great Malvern grew up around the impressive eleventh-century Priory, of which the Perpendicular church survives because it was bought by the parishioners after the Dissolution. The only other remnant of the priory is the gatehouse, the home of the Malvern Museum of Local History.
Malvern water was esteemed from the seventeenth century, but was not widely known outside the local area. Dr John Wall (1708-1776) promoted it in a pamphlet entitled Experiments and observations on the Malvern Water (1756), which a critic summarised in an ironic couplet:
The Malvern water, says Doctor John Wall,
Is famed for containing just nothing at all.
We must remember that until the nineteenth century, pure water was a rarity. Most people drank small beer, cider or mead if they could get it. Tea, coffee and drinking chocolate were outlandish luxuries, accessible only to the very rich.
Gradually, through the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century, Malvern’s trade in its natural water grew.
The two most celebrated Malvern wells are St Ann’s Well which the Lady of the Manor, Lady Emily Foley (1805-1900) encouraged by extending the existing building in 1841 and, in Malvern Wells, the Holy Well which became the base for Schweppes’ bottling plant from 1850. Both these wells explicitly made Malvern water available to local people.
The district was transformed by the arrival in 1842 of Dr James Wilson (1807-1867) and Dr James Manby Gully (1808-1883), leading exponents of hydrotherapy, the highly popular but ultimately controversial water treatment developed by Dr Vinzenz Priessnitz (1799-1851) at Grafenburg, Silesia.
The pair set up clinics in Malvern (Holyrood House for women and Tudor House for men) and were joined by other practitioners to make the area famous.
The railway from Worcester to Malvern Link opened in 1859, and a succession of distinguished figures – among them Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale – visited and took away glowing recommendations of the benefits of taking the Malvern waters. Indeed, Malvern water has been preferred by British monarchs from Queen Elizabeth I to Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Victoria refused to travel without it.
Enthusiasm for being wrapped in wet blankets at the crack of dawn declined by the beginning of the twentieth century, but Malvern’s quiet charms remained attractive, and the hydros and large residences were easily converted to boarding schools, of which Malvern College (1862), Abbey College (1874) and Malvern St James (1893) remain in operation.
As an education centre, Malvern encouraged cultural activities. Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), who was born near Worcester and grew up in the city, spent much of his life in and around Malvern and Hereford: ELGAR – The Elgar Trail. Rose Gifford’s Elgar Fountain (2000) on Belle Vue Terrace incorporates a statue of the composer.
The Head of English at Malvern College, George Sayer (1914-2005), knew both C S Lewis (1898-1963) and J R R Tolkien (1892-1973). Lewis had been a student of George Sayer, who became his biographer, and he introduced his Oxford University colleague Tolkien to Sayer and to Malvern and its hills. C S Lewis is said to have been inspired to write the opening of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by a snowy street lit by Great Malvern’s characteristic gas lamps.
Malvern is a healthy, comfortable place whether you’re growing towards adulthood or reaping the rewards of a working life, and in between it’s an admirable base for exploring a beautiful part of England, resonant with history and culture.
Note: The Malvern Museum of Local History is closed for refurbishment from November 2025 and is planned to reopen on March 28th 2026: Welcome to Malvern Museum – Malvern Museum of Local History.