Town in North Yorkshire, England
Harrogate
A foul-smelling sulphur spring turned Harrogate into England's most elegant spa town, and a vanished crime writer once hid in its hotel.
Key information
- County
- North Yorkshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Spa waters, Bettys Tea Rooms, Yorkshire Tea, flower shows and the Great Yorkshire Show
- What locals are called
- Harrogatians
- Famous people
- Agatha Christie (famous visitor), William Slingsby, Frederick Belmont, Charles Taylor
- Football clubs
- Harrogate Town
About Harrogate
The town that got rich on a stinking spring
In 1571, a Captain William Slingsby tasted the water bubbling from a spring on the edge of the Forest of Knaresborough and decided it resembled the famous waters of Spa in Belgium. That spring, the Tewit Well, put Harrogate on the map. It turned out the town sat on more than 80 mineral springs, many with a different chemical make-up, squeezed into a small area. Some were iron-rich. Others were sulphurous enough to smell like bad eggs. The Old Sulphur Well was among the most pungent in Britain, and visitors drank it anyway. By the Georgian and Victorian eras, the wealthy were arriving by the carriage-load to sip, bathe and be seen. Harrogate grew from scattered inns into a grand town of hotels, gardens and promenades.
Why the Stray can never be built on
Harrogate's great green swathe, the Stray, runs right alongside the town centre. It is about 200 acres of open grassland, and it is protected by an Act of Parliament from 1770. The Act was passed so that people could always reach the wells across open common land. It ended up saving one of the best front gardens of any town in England. The Royal Pump Room, built over the Old Sulphur Well in 1842, still stands as a museum where you can sniff the water's famous aroma. Nearby, the Royal Baths and the Victorian Turkish Baths, opened in 1897, keep the spa tradition steaming.
The day Agatha Christie vanished into a Harrogate hotel
On 3 December 1926, the crime writer Agatha Christie disappeared from her home, Styles, in Sunningdale, Berkshire. Her abandoned car was found at Newlands Corner in Surrey. A huge police search followed and the story gripped the nation. She was found 11 days later at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, now the Old Swan. She had checked in under the name Theresa Neele, using the surname of her husband's mistress. Christie never gave a full public account of why. The hotel has traded on its famous guest ever since, and Harrogate now hosts a crime writing festival every July.
Tea, toffee and a very big scone
Harrogate is a serious tea town. Frederick Belmont, a Swiss confectioner, opened Bettys here in 1919. Nobody has ever settled who the original Betty was. During the Second World War, airmen from nearby bases flocked to Bettys. At the sister café in York, servicemen signed a mirror with a diamond-tipped pen, and the Bettys Mirror survives there with their signatures. The best-known bake is the Fat Rascal, a fruity scone with a face made of almonds and cherries, introduced in 1983. In 1886, Charles Taylor started the tea and coffee business that became Taylors of Harrogate, home of Yorkshire Tea since 1977. Farrah's Harrogate Toffee, made since 1840, is a rock-hard treat traditionally broken up with a small hammer.
Flowers, farming and a very famous bike race
Harrogate is a town that loves a show. Its spring and autumn flower shows draw gardeners from all over, and RHS Garden Harlow Carr, which joined the Royal Horticultural Society in 2001, is a major northern garden. Every July the Great Yorkshire Showground fills with livestock, tractors and cheese. It is the biggest county show of its kind in Yorkshire. In July 2014, the Tour de France began in Yorkshire and Stage 1 finished in Harrogate. Mark Cavendish crashed in the final sprint and Marcel Kittel won. In 2019 the UCI Road World Championships also came to the town.
Sulphurites on the pitch
Harrogate Town AFC, founded in 1914, are nicknamed the Sulphurites, a nod to those smelly springs. For most of their history they played non-league football. In August 2020, they beat Notts County 3–1 in the National League play-off final at Wembley, and won promotion to the Football League for the first time. Simon Weaver was the manager who led them there. Locals, known as Harrogatians, still enjoy a town where a Victorian theatre, an Edwardian Royal Hall and a conference centre sit side by side with a rather smart tea room.
Related articles
Afternoon Tea
A Duchess with a sinking feeling at four o'clock gave Britain its poshest snack, and the jam-or-cream argument has divided two counties ever since.
Culture & TraditionsAgatha Christie
The best-selling novelist of all time vanished for eleven days in 1926, and checked into a Harrogate hotel under her husband's mistress's surname.
People