Every summer before the First World War, tens of thousands of people travelled to a small town in the middle of Wales to drink water that tasted of salt, sulphur and iron. Llandrindod Wells had somewhere between about nine hundred and eighteen hundred permanent residents in 1901, depending on which boundary you count, and 2,779 by 1911 — and in the season the place filled many times over. None of it was there before the railway. The Central Wales line reached Llandrindod in 1865 and was complete through to Swansea by 1868; the commons of Cefnllys and Llandrindod were enclosed under an Act of 1862 that took effect in 1867, and seventy-six building plots went up for sale. Within a generation there were pump rooms and bath houses, five principal hotels, streets of boarding houses, an ornamental lake dug out of a bog, bowling greens, golf and orchestras — a complete Edwardian resort built around a medical idea. Then medicine changed its mind. The spa clinics survived on National Health Service contracts after 1948; by 1963 only eight spas were left in Britain and Llandrindod was the only Welsh one; the Rock Park treatment centre closed in 1972 and spa treatment in the town ended in 1978. The town is still standing, almost untouched, built for a treatment no doctor prescribes.

What you'll learn
• What the waters actually were — saline, sulphur and chalybeate springs — what Georgian and Victorian doctors believed they treated, and why the regimen of rest, walking and warm water did more than the minerals ever did.
• How the town was made: the Central Wales line reaching Llandrindod in 1865 and completed to Swansea in 1868, the enclosure of the common under the Act of 1862 taking effect in 1867, and the boom building of hotels and boarding houses from 1868 to 1914.
• The shape of a spa season, from May to mid-September: the Rock Park pump room, the marble drinking fountain given to the public in 1879, the boating lake of 1872–73, the Albert Hall built by the Presbyterians in 1896 for Welsh-language services, and Tom Norton's Automobile Palace of 1911.
• Why the trade ended and the town did not: paid holidays and the seaside after 1938, the National Health Service spa contracts and their cancellation, the closure of the Rock Park centre in 1972, and the creation of Powys in 1974 that made Llandrindod a county town.

Educational and historical content.

Key sources
• Cadw — Register of Landscapes, Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Llandrindod Wells public parks and Rock Park, Grade II* (cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net full register report)
• Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Wales (1849), entry for Llandrindod (british-history.ac.uk)
• The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894–5: Llandrindod, Radnorshire (ukga.org)
• Llandrindod Wells Town Council — The Spa, and Llandrindod Wells Boom Town (llandrindodwellstowncouncil.co.uk)
• History of the British Spas Federation — spa treatment under the National Health Service and the eight remaining British spas of 1963 (malvernwaters.com)
— and other sources

#history #Wales #LlandrindodWells #Powys #Victorianhistory