February 2010

Who are our Friends? Friends promote research, conservation and celebration of the Springs, Spouts, Fountains and Holy Wells of the Malvern Hills and of Great Malvern as a Spa Town.

In the picture fire crews enter the building while grey smoke pours from the roof at the rear.

On Thursday 18th February 2010, one of Malvern's most important heritage buildings caught fire. The town was thrown into chaos as a combination of roads closed for the emergency vehicles and a heavy snowfall meant that traffic was backing up on all the approach roads. By lunchtime the fire brigade appeared to have the fire more or less under control but even through the thickly falling snow the damage was apparent. Tudor House was the 19th century water cure establishment of Dr Gully. He treated his gentlemen patients in Tudor House and the ladies in Holyrood House next door, the two buildings being linked by the Bridge of Sighs. In recent years the buildings have shown signs of severe deterioration and for a while housed people living on government assistance. More recently Tudor House has lain empty. Plans were under consideration to restore the building and give it an appropriate new life, but obviously any such notions are now jeopardised by the catastrophic fire. It will be a while before a full damage assessment is possible but often the unsafe nature of a surviving structure means demolition is inevitable. It is ironical that in the Malvern Gazette on 12 February was editorial calling for Malvern Hills District Council to serve an Urgent Works Notice on the owner. Planning Department was preparing their reply to the request from The Victorian Society. Apparently the grade 2 listed building was not on the English Heritage "At Risk Register".

We wait the aftermath with the knowledge that Malvern will perhaps lose forever a building that was in part responsible for putting the word Great into the town.

G B Shaw Mulberry Tree and Spring update.

The news on the Mulberry Tree saplings, destined we hope for Priory Park, is good. All six appear to have survived the winter and four of the six have small green leaves that we anticipate will develop rapidly once the warmer weather arrives. It has been a particularly hard winter and the saplings were no doubt bewildered by the peculiarity of the seasons, having travelled halfway around the globe last August.  Our problem now is how long will it be before they are robust enough to plant in their final location? We are trying to coordinate the production of our new book with the planting of the replacement to George Bernard Shaw's tree near the Mulberry Spring in Priory Park; the plan being to launch both at a combined celebration. Keep an eye on the Mulberry Tree web site to see the latest developments with the project - the site information is at the end of this newsletter.

Dame Laura Knight - Storm over our Town Malvern

This view of Malvern Priory was painted between 1935 and 1951 by artist, author, poet, playwright and designer Dame Laura Knight (1877 - 1970).  She wrote: 'This picture took me years to paint, what happens in that fraction of an instant of time when lightning strikes?' Dame Laura and husband Harold Knight became frequent visitors to Malvern after forming a friendship with Sir Barry Jackson, founder of the Malvern Festival, and this storm was taking place one day when she was staying at the Mount Pleasant Hotel.

What has this got to do with Malvern Springs and Wells? Firstly, we can see the springs being replenished. Secondly, in the 1930s Dame Laura sometimes stayed with her friend Professor Alardyce Nicoll at his home, Winds Acres, near British Camp.  There she used the upper room of the stable and coach house as a studio, and extended the west window to improve the light and the view. In the grounds of Winds Acre is a well and nearby is a rotary windlass well pump...

In the Friends Newsletter we always try and put some news or comment about Springs and Wells from outside Malvern. The Malvern Hills are not the only place that treasures its natural sources and news on the wider front broadens our perspective. This time it's Epsom and Ewell springs in Surrey. Epsom was an early spa town that based its efficacy on having a jolly time and the Epsom Salts. It was patronised by royalty and the gentry as well as notorious figures like Sally Mapp the bone setter and Nell Gwyn. Samuel Pepys was a regular visitor and the town enjoyed a somewhat nefarious reputation as the rich and famous rode out for recreation and a purge.  Epsom only took off where nearby Ewell and Nonsuch Palace left off. Ewell was the centre of an earlier healing centre based on the springs. Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I both recognised the merits of the locality. Unfortunately Henry died before his palace could be completed but Elizabeth enjoyed the inheritance. Now a new book is available tracing the rise and fall of the two resorts and how Epsom is now famous for its horse racing, which originated during the spa era. What is more the new book is FREE on-line. To have a read and print off a copy go to www.EpsomWells.com  If you are in the area do stop by and look at many of the artefacts that survive from the earlier spa era. Many early spa buildings continue to adorn the town centre, including the oldest surviving Assembly Rooms in the country. Also call in at Bourne Hall Museum, Ewell where the curator Jeremy Harte will be delighted to offer help and the benefits of his knowledge.

The most reliable method of distributing Friends of Malvern Springs and Wells Newsletters is by post.  This is time consuming and expensive and we have had to introduce a modest charge as the number have increased over the years. One alternative is email. This is fine and is useful because recipients can then forward the newsletters to their colleagues. We know that our newsletters end up in all sorts of unexpected places as a result and this enables us to solicit support for our springs and wells. Unfortunately email is also problematic because some mail boxes are full, some email addresses are defunct and sometimes they get missed by the recipient.  The result is that every now and again we are contacted for back numbers or reinstatement on our distribution list.

As newsletters are now such a useful research tool as well, we have decided to put them on-line. If you do not get the expected one through the normal channels, after about 1 year we will put it on line so that you can catch up with the past news and views. The index page is linked to our web site at www.malvernspa.com  or click on the girlie left. It took a while to get back numbers on the site but they are all done and so you can catch up with all that ever was over the years that we have been publishing Friends newsletters.

Newdigate Wells

Researching springs and wells is not always a case of sitting comfortably in the warm, pressing buttons on your computer and searching the internet to see what someone else has already discovered or written about. Original research requires you to get out there and unearth facts from original documents and archives, prime source works and practical groundwork. This was amply demonstrated recently when Bruce was summoned to Melton Hall Farm in Newdigate where a spring had erupted in a field. After much digging, with the assistance of a mini digger and a spade, we managed to not only unearth the spring but also a strange vertically laid six inch earthenware pipe. This was not a previously undiscovered spring, but one that had been forgotten and buried over the years, erupting during the wet period this winter.  The owners were amazed and delighted having been aware of a wet area in the field for years but never dreaming that it was a spring. Now they are thinking of turning it into the supply for a lake. Meanwhile it took Bruce several days to clean up after the exploration over the New Year period!

www.BritishNationalParks.com

Our web site is hosted by the British National Parks web site. Enclosed is a free postcard, which you will see includes the Malvern Hills. The site supports the argument that the Malvern Hills are Britain's original National Park in everything but name. More details of this debate are available on the National Parks Data page of the site. If you receive your Newsletters by email you can still obtain some free cards. To receive 6 cards free, send a stamped addressed envelope, normal post card size or thereabouts, to Parks Cards, Tower House, 15 Tower Road, Tadworth, Surrey, UK. KT20 5QY. One envelope per household please.

Since we first published in 1992

It is encouraging to see the ever expanding interest in Malvern's water heritage.  Today there are numerous web sites and a wide range of publications and leaflets all promoting this now popular theme. They provide inspiration for others to become actively involved in their own watery activities and research, which we applaud. This raises the question, what is research? Original research involves going back to primary sources in libraries, Record Offices and other repositories, and in some cases much field work. This is a laborious process often resulting in many hours spent which sometimes produce little new knowledge. Research also involves interpretation, rather than merely writing down facts. For some, the temptation is to short cut the process and use recent secondary source material, i.e. rewrite other people's work. The internet provides endless opportunities to 'copy paste' and call it yours, a problem encountered today in academic coursework. This is plagiarism and is much frowned upon by professionals, academics, and the legal profession. Some of the worst culprits, it seems, are untrained, self-styled, 'experts'. We recently had a situation where one such person announced that they had been 'doing some research' and then proceeded to rewrite our books, with the resulting illicit pilfering of our intellectual properties! Such flagrant abuse of the terms of copying set out in the title pages amounts to theft and is enforceable through due legal process.

Talking of books, we have two new books on the way. The first book, to be published shortly, is Cora's Florence Nightingale and the Water Cure.  It contains much previously unpublished material about Florence's numerous visits to Malvern where she hoped to recover her health and strength. The book's 88 pages and 29 illustrations show where she stayed, what she said, what she did, and who she saw. Priced at £7.95 it will be available from Cora from mid-April. This will be followed by our long-awaited new book about the springs and fountains of the Malvern Hills. It's the result of 20 years of original research and will include many surprises for enthusiasts of the 130 springs around the hills.

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