The Yorkshire town of Ilkley had a modest reputation as a spa from the early eighteenth century [No additives | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times] on the remarkable attribute that its mineral water was practically devoid of minerals.
Vinzenz Priessnitz (1799-1851), a Silesian peasant farmer, developed and patented hydrotherapy treatment, a system of baths, compresses and treatments involving wrapping patients in wet sheets, at Gräfenburg in Silesia in 1829. His procedures were satisfyingly uncomfortable, yet less life-threatening than other medical practices.
Captain Richard Tappin Claridge’s publication Hydropathy; or The Cold Water Cure, as practised by Vincent Priessnitz… (1842) encouraged the development of the first British hydropathic establishment at Malvern where the water had long been “famous for containing just nothing at all”.
Ilkley was quick to follow, when a consortium of Leeds businessmen opened a magnificent Scottish Baronial hydro named Ben Rhydding in 1844.
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The first resident physician, a Silesian, Dr Anthony Rischanek, left under some kind of a cloud, about which he harboured resentment for the rest of his life. He was succeeded by a leading proponent of the water-cure, Dr William Macleod, who established at Ben Rhydding the rigorous, wholesome lifestyle which initially characterised hydropathy.
The success of Ben Rhydding inevitably encouraged competitors. Wells House was established in 1853, at a cost of £30,000 in competition to Ben Rhydding, offering many of the same facilities at comparable prices.
The four-square turreted building, opened in 1856, was designed by Cuthbert Brodrick, who was at that time engaged in building Leeds Town Hall and would later create the Grand Hotel, Scarborough.
Smaller, less expensive hydros followed. Craiglands, which opened in 1859, boasted Dr Macleod’s services as “consulting physician”. Charging around £2 12s 0d per week, about a pound less than the Ben Rhydding and Wells House, Craiglands was repeatedly enlarged, until the original plain classical structure sprouted a dour and domineering Scottish Baronial extension.
The Troutbeck was financed by the then resident physician from Wells House, Dr Edmund Smith, and opened about a year before his death in 1864. Its medical practitioners were brought in from Wells House, including a Dr Harrison who combined hydropathic treatments with galvanism.
Other Ilkley hydros included the Grove (c1870, later the Spa), supervised by Dr Scott from Wells House, Sunset View (by 1871), Rockwood (1871), Marlborough House (1878), Stoney Lea (1883), run by a former bathman from Ben Rhydding, Mr Emmott, and Moorlands (1897).
Steadily towards the end of the nineteenth century the hydros’ therapeutic purpose was diluted by increasing demand from guests for leisure facilities. Chambers’ Encyclopaedia of 1906 commented that “most [so-called hydros] originally started with [the] full equipment for treatment, including a resident physician…but many now are merely high-class country boarding-houses”.
In the twentieth century every one of the Ilkley establishments declined and closed. Ben Rhydding closed permanently at the start of the Second World War and was demolished in 1955. After wartime requisition Wells House became a college of further education and is now luxury apartments; Craiglands is now a hotel and Troutbeck was until recently a care home. The Spa and Rockwood were converted into flats, and Marlborough House and Stoney Lea have been demolished.
