Gilsland Spa
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Gilsland Spa is the present-day name of a Co-operative hotel at Gilsland, Cumbria, England. It is named from the sulphurous spring which issues from a cliff below the hotel.
The original hotel was called The Shaws (an old word meaning small areas of woodland) and was built around 1740. Very little is known about this building but one contemporary drawing suggests that it may have had a tower and may have been based upon a fortified house, known locally as a peel. The original Shaws hotel burned down spectacularly in 1859, and was replaced on a grander scale soon afterwards by G. G. Mounsey. Somewhere around this time, Rose Hill railway station was renamed Gilsland, and the surrounding collection of hamlets became the village of Gilsland, but the hotel continued to be called The Shaws until it was leased to the Gilsland Spa Hotel and Hydro Company of South Shields in 1893. Expensive renovations, including an improved water supply, crippled this company financially, and it failed in 1900. During its time the hotel has been a convalescent home and a wartime maternity hospital and was known locally until recently as "The Home".
The hotel has been a popular resort since the eighteenth century. Walter Scott came here in 1797 looking for a wife (and found one) and the opening of the railway station in 1836 galvanised the village. During the later part of the 19th century and the early 20th, Gilsland was thronged with tourists, many of whom were working-class people from Tyneside. Reviewers of the hotel repeatedly stress the free and easy way in which the different classes mixed. One of the main attractions, though for reasons no-one is prepared to admit, has been the Popping Stone an enigmatic stone some half a mile from the hotel in a secluded glade, linked to all sorts of courtship and fertility rituals. Next to the stone was the Kissing Bush, an ancient hawthorn which has died. These relics and the two mineral springs (sulphurous and chalybeate) are situated along the network of wide footpaths known as the Home Walks which provide access to the rugged scenery of the hotel grounds.
The Co-operative Wholesale Society took over in 1902 and have run it ever since. The Co-operative Group are the principal shareholders in the business. The present-day management welcome the use of its large car park by visitors wishing to enjoy the dramatic wooded gorge, and offer food, drink and accommodation. Gilsland Spa has a sister hotel, The Esplanade, in Scarborough, Yorkshire.
[edit] References
- Lamb, J. n.d. c2001. Gilsland Spa - A Co-operative Centenary History; Co-operative Society (? - no title page) This book can purchased from the hotel.
