LEAMINGTON

Leamington is charmingly situated in the heart of the county, towards the eastern boundary of the wide amphitheatre of gradually rising hills of which its sister town of Warwick, distant but two miles from it, is the centre. The oldest portion of the town is built on the low–lying ground to the south side of the River Leam, and was in former years known as the old town. Modern Leamington, on the other hand, which is so picturesque, and consists of fine villas, well–planned streets and avenues, lies on the northern side of the river, and has its origin from the time onwards when the baths were first discovered and turned to good account by local enterprise.

One of the most conspicuous charms of Leamington is its profusion of foliage; and close to some of its main streets, and, indeed, bordering them, are beautiful trees, all of which, from their variety, are seldom leafless at one and the same time. The modern town at the time of its inception was far more wisely laid out than was usual in former days, for it is a place of straight and wide avenues and streets, planned with almost American precision.

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To those who have never visited Leamington such a description may not evoke any visions of beauty, but the regularity which marks the laying out of the town has been wisely tempered by the preservation and planting, wherever possible, of rows of elms, lindens, and plane trees, which not only break up the monotony of streets, but impart to the town an almost garden–like aspect. Notwithstanding, however, the fact that in the byroads, streets, and avenues of the residential quarters, more especially of Milverton and Lillington, grass plats separate the footpaths from the road, adding materially to the beauty and distinction of the place, the business quarter is no less business–like than that of other towns. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American novelist, has written enthusiastically of Leamington; and those who have resided in this beautiful spot all the year round can testify that his statement, that it is a place of charm which is “always in flower,” is not far from the truth.

The rise of Leamington has been of considerable rapidity, as until the end of the eighteenth century it was merely an obscure village, and in the year 1801 the population was only just over three hundred souls, and the number of houses but sixty–seven.

Its full tide in former years was Leamington Priors, derived from the fact that the town is built on the banks of the River Leam, and once belonged to the priors of Kenilworth. In modern days it has become known as Leamington Spa, the late Queen Victoria, in memory of a visit she paid to the place in 1838, giving it the title of the Royal Leamington Spa.

The town is very unlike in appearance its ancient and more celebrated neighbour Warwick. In fact, whilst the latter has its chief attraction in antiquity, Leamington has its chief interest as a modern and fashionable health resort. It is wrong, however, to suppose that Leamington has no history, and is as entirely modern as its appearance would lead one at first sight to presume.

The name of the river upon which it stands is of ancient Celtic origin, and means the elm–tree or elm–bordered stream, and doubtless in ancient times it was well–wooded for the greater part of its course on both banks. There are many Celtic river names to be met with in Warwickshire, and generally these survivals have indicated an ancient settlement, or at least camp of the invaders, although as regards Leamington no traces of one now remain if it ever existed.

The town was in ancient times a portion of the very wide possessions of Turchill, the last and most powerful of all the Saxon earls of Warwick. In the Domesday Book the estate is put down as containing two hides, or about two hundred acres of land, the value of which was £4. There is also a mention of two mills situated on the stream within its boundaries. Turchill’s son was robbed of this part of his patrimony, and it was granted by William the Conqueror to a Norman baron, Roger de Montgomery, who was afterwards created Earl of Shrewsbury.

In those early days the town, or rather perhaps should we say the hamlet, known as Leamington underwent great vicissitudes of ownership, for although Roger de Montgomery’s son Hugh inherited the estates, his brother Robert, to whom they descended during the reign of William Rufus, called De Beleseme from the name of a castle which belonged to him, was declared a traitor, and all his possessions, including Leamington, were seized, and the latter was given to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. After a few years the possession of it passed to Geoffrey de Clinton, and was by him granted to Gilbert Nutricius of Warwick and his heirs, who held it by the service of half a knight’s fee. For some reason, however, it speedily reverted to the De Clintons, and Geoffrey de Clinton, son of the original owner, gave it to the canon and priors of Kenilworth about the year 1166, in whose possession it remained until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It remained the property of the Crown till 1563, when Elizabeth granted it to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. He dying without an heir male, his title became extinct, and from this period Leamington had many owners, ultimately coming into the possession of the Earls of Aylesford.

Although Leamington in ancient times had its vicissitudes, there is little of interest historically concerning it until about the year 1784, when Abbotts made the discovery of a second mineral spring, which caused attention to be focussed on the medicinal properties of the Leamington waters. It is doubtless to the discovery of these springs, and others, may be traced the fact that the town in the first years of the nineteenth century began to be a place of importance and fashion. Long before then Camden, Speed, and Dugdale had mentioned prominently the Leamington Waters; and Fuller in 1662, referring to the same subject, quaintly observes, “At Leamington, two miles from Warwick, there issue out, within a stride, [out] of the womb of the earth, two twin springs, as different in taste and operation as Jacob and Esau in disposition; the one salt and the other fresh. This the meanest countryman does plainly see by their effects; while it would puzzle a consultation of physicians to assign the cause thereof.”

Notwithstanding Fuller’s opinion, medical writers soon began to publish speculations concerning mineral waters, and upon these very springs in particular. The earliest pamphleteer upon record was Dr. Guidot in 1689, and he was succeeded by many others, including Doctors Allen, Short, Johnson, Kerr, Kirwan, Middleton, and Loudon. It was Dr. Allen who first settled in the place, and Mr. William Abbotts, who, in 1786, sunk the second well and erected and opened the first baths in June of the same year. This well was almost in the centre of the old village. The third spring or the Road Well, is situated on the high road from Warwick to Daventry and London, and was discovered in 1790.

Leamington was much patronised by those who either were afflicted by real or fancied ailments, which the waters might be hoped to cure, and the efforts of Dr. Abbotts did much to popularise the place. In his endeavour to spread abroad the fame of the place, he was ably seconded by his friend Benjamin Satchwell, the village poet and shoemaker, who had had the good fortune, in 1784, to discover the well on a piece of land in Bath Street.

Referring to the increased importance, size, and prosperity of the town, Satchwell wrote:—

If Muster Abbotts had not done,
His baths of laud and praise;

It must have been poor Leamington,
Now, as in former days.

These two men, no doubt, had much to do with the initial stages of the town’s prosperity, and on the tomb of Satchwell may be traced, but with difficulty, as the inscription is greatly obliterated:—

Hail the unassuming tomb,

Of him who told where health and beauty bloomed;
Of him whose lengthened life improving ran—

A blameless, useful, venerable man.

The advocacy of these and other Leamingtonians caused the town to advance rapidly into public favour, and the discovery of other wells up till the year 1819 served to provide ample accommodation for bathers and others, making the place one of the most famous health–resorts in England.

In these days, indeed, Leamington might well have been called “The Bath of the Midlands,” for to the town were attracted much the same classes of invalids and fashionable folk as were drawn to its more famous Somersetshire prototype; and, indeed, Leamington must have been then even a gayer and more fashionable town than it is at the present time.

From the Leamington of the last few years of the eighteenth century to the flourishing town of to–day is, indeed, a far cry. Then, according to one authority, it was little more than a small sequestered village, to which the mail–coaches came no nearer than Warwick, and any letters or parcels for the inhabitants could only be obtained by some enterprising villager going over to the latter place for them.

And even in the first decade of the nineteenth century Macready, the great actor, writes thus of the place in his diary. Referring to Birmingham he says: “The summer months were passed there, diversified by a short stay at Leamington, then a small village consisting only of a few thatched houses—not one of them tiled or slated; the Bowling Green being the only one where very moderate accommodation could be secured. There was in process of erection a hotel of more pretention, which I fancy was to be the ‘Dog’ or ‘Greyhound,’ but which had some months of work to fit it for the reception of guests.”

It was in the year 1819 that the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., visited Leamington from Warwick, where he was staying with the Earl of Warwick; and three years later the Princess Augusta came to the town to take a course of the waters, and from that time the place may be considered to have been firmly established in public favour. Quoting from a contemporary writer, “where but a few years earlier cattle grazed undisturbedly, yellow corn waved, and the plough–boy whistled over the Leam, we now behold with surprise and pleasure extensive mansions arising as if by magic, and tastefully decorated shops presenting every Metropolitan article of fashion and convenience.”

Some other famous visitors who came to Leamington in the early years of the last century were the Princess Victoria, in company with her mother the Duchess of Kent; and later John Ruskin, who testified to the benefit derived from a six weeks’ course of the Chalybeate Spring as follows: “My health is in my own hands, I have gone back to brown potatoes and cherry pie!”

But Leamington of to–day owes a good deal less of its popularity to its springs than it does to its beautiful situation, and the fact of it being such an excellent centre for interesting excursions; whilst hunting people regard the place as an almost unequalled sporting district, from the circumstance that a fashionable life can be enjoyed there in conjunction with hunting six days a week, and the choice of as many packs. Warwickshire, indeed, has been called the third best hunting county in England, and Leamington must take even a higher place as a centre for hunting folk.

One of the prettiest features of this town, distinguished nowadays for its handsome shops and villas, are the Jephson Gardens, covering an area of some twenty acres, and situated almost in the centre of the town, the picturesqueness of which is greatly added to by the presence of the River Leam skirting them along the southern boundary. This site was rented to trustees for a period of two thousand years at a pepper–corn rent (if demanded) by the late Mr. Edward Willes, of Newbold Comyn, with the stipulation that the ground should never be built upon. The property, which was then a strip of meadow land, was taken over by the trustees in May 1846, and was immediately laid out by them in much its present form.

On the opposite side of the river are the Mill Gardens; and on the same side of the river and along its western circuit has been laid out a pretty Victoria Park, with its picturesque New River Walk.

Still farther sylvan promenades are afforded by the Pump Room Gardens. The grounds are several acres in extent, and are beautifully laid out with ornamental flower–beds and winding paths; whilst on the side next to the parade is the famous Linden Avenue, three–quarters of a century old, and forming one of the finest shady promenades in Leamington, or indeed in any town of the Midlands.

Of ancient public buildings Leamington has practically none, if one excepts the reconstructed and much altered Pump Room, once the scene of so much of the fashionable life of the town.

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None of the other public buildings, with the exception of the Town Hall, call for particular notice.

There are not a few literary associations with Leamington, and the Holly Walk, which is a continuation of Regent Grove, a fine tree–lined avenue, will always possess an interest for lovers of Dickens from the fact that here the novelist laid the scene of the first meeting between Edith Granger and Mr. Carker in Dombey and Son. Scarcely a more picturesque spot than this walk, with its row of fine trees running down the centre, its grass plats, shady seats, and flower beds, could be found for a meeting of the kind.

The old Bedford Hotel, which was the scene of one of the famous Jack Mytton’s most remarkable exploits, when for a wager he rode his mare upstairs into the dining–room, set her at the large table, which she cleared, jumping over the heads of his assembled friends, and then continued her course out of the balcony into the street below, has long disappeared; doubtless to the regret of all hunting folk and of the curious sightseer.

Like Hawthorne, those who have visited Leamington carry away with them pleasant memories of a town which, although owing much to natural beauty of situation, yet owes also not a little to the intelligence and foresight of those responsible for its development, who may be said to have coaxed rather than coerced Nature in their efforts to make the spot one of uncommon rural and urban attractiveness, whilst still mindful of the demands of exigent moderns.