CULTURAL LANDSCAPES OF WATER IN STAFFORDSHIRE

(reprinted from Philip Morgan, ‘Community and Identity: Community, Recreation and Water,’ in An Historical Atlas of Staffordshire, edited by A.D.M. Phillips and C.B. Phillips, Manchester 2011, 152-3.)

In the middle ages water was part of the vocabulary of lordship, prosaically but significantly in the control ofwater corn mills, and more dramatically in the landscape of the castle. Amongst midland castles, that at Newcastle, now almost completely lost and forgotten, musthave been amongst the most startling examples of a landscape managed with water. The fossil remains of the castle pool, some 600 metres long and 300 metres wide, continued to inhibit the physical development of the towninto the twentieth century. Medieval moated sites, treated elsewhere, carried the vocabulary down to the levels of the parish gentry, and to the realm of the water feature. Later this would be the territory of the country house and the landscaped park, often with its artificially created pools and lakes. In the seventeenth century the manipulation of water had belonged to the culture of curiosity, a standard of appreciation for nature and art. Robert Plot, for example, devoted a largepart of his Natural History of Staffordshire to the waters of the county. Initially greater lords built fountains, as at Trentham and Chartley which demonstrated ingenuity in theplay of water, took to their natural lakes and meres in boats, as at Aqualate, or later even staged mock naval battles in the classical style, as at Batchacre Hall in the 1770s. From the mid-nineteenth century water belongsto the realm of large-scale infra-structure projects, thereservoirs and sewage schemes which are taken as the suresign of modernity.

But, water might also be ritualised, taken for its curative properties and used for recreation. A pre-Christian culture of water may have survived in Staffordshire long enough to metamorphose into the widespread custom of well dressing noted by Robert Plot in the 1680s. He thought it an innocent practice observed

for decency and custom’s sake in grateful memory for the good that holy wells had formerly done, but cited only Brewood and Bilbrook. Other locations can be securely documented only from the late eighteenth century; revivals and inventions in the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries have been common. The modern focus onthe Moorlands is mirrored in the Derbyshire Peak, both areas of rare water where wells remained significant intothe second half of the twentieth century.

The later association of wells and springs with baptism and Christian agency was ubiquitous, and was a foundationof the medieval ritual landscape, the curative propertiesof water often mediated by the intervention of particularsaints. Some, like Chad, Bertelin, Wulfrun, Rufin and Modwen commemorate Mercian regional and local cults; others, like Erasmus, were famed for their efficacy in curing specific illnesses. Those dedicated to St Anne mayultimately derive from the church at the pool of Bethesdain Jerusalem. A few, like St Chad’s well in Lichfield, may be genuine contact relics of the saint, but the majority may have been romantically named after c.1150.

Holy wells were less common targets for the processes ofreligious reform in the sixteenth century, and theirassociation with medicinal cures frequently encouraged their persistence in local traditions. ‘Reformed waters’ continued in use in many places, most notably near Stow Pool in Lichfield or at Ingestre; in 1565 the tenants of the manor of Bagot’s Bromley were subjectto a bye-law prohibiting interference with the water of St Margaret’s well.

Knowledge of Pliny’s classification of waters as sulphurous, saline, chalybeate or gaseous later formed

the basis for the rise of a medical market in which particular wells and springs were developed by physiciansand entrepreneurs, in Hanley by a grandly named ‘medical galvaniser,’ although many remained within the realm of popular cures well into the modern period. Egg well in Bradnop, known to the Romans, was revived for its curative powers in the 1740s, white deposits from the appropriately named sugar well spring in Smethwick were reportedly effective on the eyes, and children were regularly bathed at a well in Botteslow in the 1860s for its curative properties.

Other ventures were on a more serious footing. In the 1670s a warm spring at Willoughbridge was developed by Lady Jane Gerard, a pamphlet of 1675 citing over sixtycures of patients from three counties. Ultimately unsuccesful, the place was still WilloughbridgeWells in the 1740s, and the well house and pool survives today. Lichfield too became a centre for water cures. Sir John Floyer, author of the noted 1702 treatise on cold bathing, practised as a physician there for half a century

after 1675, and built a bath at Unett’s well in Burntwood, known as St Chad’s Bath. It was later leased to another Lichfield physician, Erasmus Darwin, from 1780. Richard Wilkes (d. 1760), the owner of the Wolverhampton waterworks likewise promoted the springs atWillenhall in 1750. Floyer’s advocacy of cold bathing also led many gentry to install bath houses and cold plunges on their estates. The salt springs at Shirleywichseem never to have been exploited for medical cures, but Stafford itself was later home to hot brine baths.

Brine deposits had been discovered under the common in the 1870s and in 1892 the Corporationopened public baths by the Green Bridge.The brine was at first piped from thespring on the common, and heated by coal-fired boilers to a temperature of 100 degrees fahrenheit (38 degrees celsius). It was visited by the duchess of Teck in 1895 and acquired the title, the RoyalBrine Baths, but

sadly this seems to have been the highpoint of the town’sparticipation in an international spa culture. Analysis of the surviving visitors’ book reveals a respectable regional and national clientele, with an emphasis on competition with the brine baths at Droitwich. International visitors were mostly from parts of the Empire and Commonwealth. But, other municipal corporations were sufficiently curious as to the potential commercial possibilities to send occasional delegations of watch committees and borough engineers. Cures continued to be offered throughout the life of the Baths, and in the 1930s some Birmingham hospitals continued to send their patients to Stafford, but from the 1920s visitors were also using the brine baths for swimming lessons. In 1904 Port Vale F.C. pioneered visits by football teams; in 1911 the chairmen of Port Vale and Birmingham joined each other in exploring the attractions of the baths. There were other visiting teams, including Everton and Liverpool, until the later 1940s. In 1927 Matthew McQueen, Liverpool’s manager,

noted, ‘This our fourth visit this season. The team haveexperienced great benefits from their successive visits.’They had beaten Everton in the League two days earlier, but the benefit was not long-lasting enough to prevent a 2-0 defeat by Arsenal in the fifth round of the F.A. cup on the following Saturday.

In the nineteenth century the use of water played its part in the internal moral reform of European populations with its twin emphases on cleanliness and athleticism. Washing, bathing and rational recreation were easily addedto traditions of medicalisedwater and are exemplified bythe development of river swimming clubs and public baths. The amateur one-mileswimming championships in open still water, established in 1873, were

held at Kidsgrove in 1891, and the Burton swimming club had facilities on the Trent from at least 1870. The earliest baths were privately developed and relied on subscriptions and fees from casual bathers, but what fromthe late eighteenth century had often been exclusively middle-class enterprises in cities like Paris, Vienna or Glasgow were overtaken by the response to urban squalor in the nineteenth century. Most historians cite the permissive Public Baths and Washhouses Act of 1846 as a landmark in the provision of public bathing facilities. Six Staffordshire towns had built or acquired baths within a decade of the act. Those at Wolverhampton, initially the Wolverhampton Subscription Baths Company, advertised as far away as Birmingham, Leamington, and Derby, for members, and in 1855 were approached by the local Jewish community to provide an appropriate ritual bath. Most private baths were later leased and sold to local corporations, many of whom also built their own

premises in the later nineteenth century. Public baths also allowed the encouragement of water sports and the county played an important role in the early history of swimming. James Mayger of Burton finished in the first three in the national one-hundred yards championships between 1884 and 1887, and both Burton and Hanley clubs were leading members of the earliest water polo associations. Turkish baths were often added to public facilities, and similar facilities continued to play a role in the architecture of merchant princes. The Mander family of Wolverhampton had installed a Turkish bath in their house, Wightwick manor, in 1887 and Tettenhall towers boasted swimming, salt-water and Turkish baths.