Ossett - the history of a Yorkshire town

Ossett Spa - Little Harrogate

Goring House, Ossett Common, once the home of Ossett author Stan Barstow, is virtually all that remains of an ambitious project at the end of the 19th century to develop part of Ossett Common as a second Harrogate.

Above: Goring House, once the home of Ossett novelist Stan Barstow and also previously owned by Joe Bentley and Alfred Kilbank. For a while it was converted into two flats.

The medicinal springs in the neighbourhood of Goring House, from which Spa Street, Spa Croft Road and Spring End Farm take their names, were developed commercially earlier in the nineteenth century.

Research by John Goodchild, reveals that James Ward (1746-1832), a Horbury stonemason was awarded land at Low Common at the time of the Ossett Inclosure (1807-13) and he was the first to recognise the restorative properties of the water.

When he opened the medicinal baths is not known, though Ossett Baths were still owned by Ward when they were offered to let in 1829. The bath house was then advertised as having four warm baths and one cold.

'Cheltenham baths'
The description then went on to say "The premises are delightfully situated and the waters have been analysed by several eminent men and spoken of by them as a little inferior to Cheltenham; they have gained a very high reputation from the many surprising cures they have performed. These waters are celebrated for curing gout, rheumatism and the scrofula."

By 1826, a second baths, the Spring End Cheltenham Baths had been developed and was tenanted by David Land. These baths were described as "consisting of medicated vapour, sulphurous, sitting baths and plunge shower, with a separate establishment for the poor at reduced price."

In 1832, Land took over Ward's baths, but later in the century, they seemed to have again been separately owned and operated. One, taken over in 1849, by a man called Goldsmith was offered for sale in 1877 by his widow.

The other, known as the 'Cheltenham Sulphurous Baths' and operated from 1864 by John Chappell and then subsequently by Henry Nettleton, was offered with a number of cottages, cottage garden and an orchard, for auction following Chappell's death in 1884.

Little Harrogate
For a number of years in the nineteenth century, the workhouse in Horbury was supplied with water from the Spa. The little Harrogate scheme, to which Goring House stands a a single memorial seems first to have been mooted in 1879. In January that year, the "Ossett Observer" reported:

"it was informed on reliable authority that the first section of a project for transforming Ossett Spa into a second Harrogate, as a summer residence for visitors, is to be immediately carried out. Land has already been purchased, several acres in extent, and the services of an experienced architect engaged to lay out the same into sites for residences, boarding houses and other buildings of a public character. The whole of the streets are to be planted with trees in the continental style."

Montpelier Pleasure Grounds
The lime trees, which still form avenues in Goring Park Avenue and the adjoining streets were planted in 1864, but advertising of the sites for villa residences "to be purchased over a period of six years on a quarterly installment plan" seems to have had no takers and only Goring House stands as a reminder of the ambitious scheme to develop this part of Ossett.

In 1884, part of the Spa estate land was taken over by a Batley Carr manufacturer, Mathew Wharton, with the aim of developing it as the Montpelier Pleasure Grounds with extensive gardens, a boating lake, rides and amusements.

A public entertainment was staged over the Easter holiday in 1884 and the French tightrope walker, Charles Blondin (1824-97), who had who walked across a rope suspended above Niagara Falls, performed there. Sadly, the venture was no more successful than the rest of the 'Little Harrogate' schemes and by June, Wharton was bankrupt. Wharton had a history of financial failures in the textile and entertainment businesses, including the loss of £1,000 leasing a pier on the Isle of Man.

Suicide
Goring House itself, the only villa residence to be erected, was apparently built by a man named Tennant, who was possibly the promoter for the 'Little Harrogate' project. It is said that Tennant also went bankrupt because of the failure of the enterprise and committed suicide in Goring House.

Tennant's method of paying his creditors had been to give them plots of land on the Spa Estate. The ensuing obscurity of ownership led to large areas of the land being left derelict up to at least the 1980s.

Influx of Miners
Ironically, the presence of its spa waters in the many wells and springs in the area seems to have had less permanent effect on the development of Ossett Common than the opening of Roundwood Colliery, which brought an influx of miners from Barnsley and Featherstone to settle in the area.

Until the 20th century, the typical miners dwelling was still the low stone croft cottage. At Ossett Spa, a miners cottage has recently been restored. In a survey of the living and working conditions of Yorkshire miners made in 1841, the inspectors describe the cramped conditions of large families living in similar cottages, usually consisting of just two small rooms.

People living in Ossett Spa still collected bottles of the spa water for their own consumption right up to the 1920s. A single small circular stone bath-house is still just about standing behind what used to be Illingworth's fellmongers. The wall of the bath-house was over five feet high until 1990, when the then owner J.T. Watson reduced it to around 18 inches and installed an iron gate across the entrance. The site was then bought by Alan Morris.

Above: The only remaining bath-house at Ossett Spa containing the mineral spring that used to feed the mill dam at Illingworth Bros.

It had been feared in 2007 that the entire site would be levelled since the site has been earmarked for a new warehouse by developers Niels Larsen. Sadly, there is still much confusion about the land boundaries and this important reminder of Ossett's heritage may soon be lost forever.

However, by March 2008, the land dispute had been resolved and the land that the bath house stands on was given to the owners of Spa Farm, who have taken steps to make sure that the site is preserved. Work is now in progress to fence off what is left of the Ossett Spa to prevent damage from horses kept in adajacent fields and to allow access for visitors accessing the site from Spa Lane.

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