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butler or housekeeper who would act as tour guide
and receive a tip for their troubles. From the 1740s
the gorgeous scenery of the Wye Valley became one
of England’s earliest managed tourist destinations in a
joint venture between the 4
th
Duke of Beaufort and John
Egerton, 6
th
son of the Earl of Bridgewater, who was
vicar of Ross-on-Wye, to take visitors on a cruise along
the River Wye past Tintern Abbey. When the outing
was written about by another visiting rector in 1770 its
popularity really took off. Within 20 years the Wye Valley
was among the most fashionable of the new romantic
and picturesque leisure destinations and visitors included
JMW Turner and William Wordsworth. In time and in turn
Turners paintings of the valley would draw many Victorian
visitors. By and large such tourist excursions remained the
reserve of the upper classes who had both the time and the
money necessary until the advent of cheap railway travel.
Taking The Cure
Rituals of purification through bathing were practiced in
most ancient civilisations but the Romans took to it like,
well, like ducks to water! The town of Spa in Belgium,
once the Roman resort of Aquae Spadanae gave its name
to the cult of the spa which spread wherever the Romans
laid their togas. After the fall of the Roman Empire they
became increasingly more likely to spread diseases than
cure them!
Mediaeval folk knew the benefits of drinking iron-rich or
chalybeate spring water to treat illnesses caused by iron
deficiency and indeed it was a canny Walloon ironmaster
Colin le Loup who first claimed such a cure. By the 16
th
century the old Roman practice of medicinal bathing was
revived in Bath and at about the same time was started up
at Harrogate in Yorkshire by a chap who’d been to Spa in
Belgium.
Taking the cure at a spa rapidly acquired the nature of a
status symbol and the resorts became fashionable with
high society. Wiltshire born Celia Fiennes enjoyed a long
life departing this world in 1741 just short of 80 years old.
She took the chalybeate waters at Royal Tunbridge Wells
where she was also impressed by the reliable postal service
and regular carriages to London for 8 shillings. Celia
was well born and never married, which two factors gave
her the freedom to set off around England on horseback
for nigh on twenty years continuously until she was
about 40 years old, after which she travelled sporadically
for another ten years. Her observations are recorded
in
Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of
William and Mary being the Diary of Celia Fiennes.
It’s
a good read. Though she liked Royal Tunbridge Wells
overall Kent gets a mixed press. Celia liked Rochester
very much describing the Medway as the finest river she
ever saw but Sandwich is described as “a sad old town,
the wooden houses all decayed”. There’s a touch of Jane
Austen about Miss Fiennes:
“The Cathedrall at Winchester is one of ye biggest in
England and is to be admired for its Largeness, not its
neatness or Curiosity”.
England was not yet a land of neat hedgerows and orderly
rivers with sturdy bridges; it was largely a wilderness.
Celia could journey half a day through narrow lanes,
sometimes in deep clay, with no one to show her the
way. She nearly drowned on the flooded causeway at Ely
and twice she was thrown from her mount just outside
Alresford, but suffered “noe harm I bless God.” Such
mishaps failed to upset or discourage her. It seems that her
nerves were just as strong as her body.
Some people say the nursery rhyme
Ride a Cock Horse
to Banbury Cross
is about Celia with the second line
supposed to be
To see a Fiennes lady upon a fine horse.
Who knows? She is also said to be an ancestor of the actor
Ralph Fiennes.
Vigorous Dippings
In the early 18
th
century an idea grew that drinking
seawater conferred health-giving properties and
small fishing villages like Brighton started to adapt
themselves to attract the spa crowd. By 1800 bathing
had taken off. Bathers were taken into the water in horse
drawn bathing machines attended by bathers for the men
and dippers for the ladies. The most famous 19
th
century
Brighton dipper was the sturdy Martha Gunn who took her
ladies into her arms from the steps of the bathing machine
dipping them vigorously in the water and pushing them
through the waves. By the 19
th
century chalybeate spas
were gradually replaced by these seaside resorts. The
novelist William Thackeray wrote: “It is the fashion to run
down George IV, but what myriads of Londoners ought to
thank him for inventing Brighton”.
Like many people my earliest memory of a day trip is to
the seaside. By coach, aged five, to Broadstairs with the
Salvation Army Sunday school. As we descended on to
the beach, a kindness of ravens, I went climbing over the
breakwaters but when I came back the Sally Army folk had
disappeared! They had taken off their bonnets and their
black uniforms and were now sat on towels and blankets
in their bathing costumes eating picnics and camouflaged
as ordinary people.
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