Town in Warwickshire, England
Leamington Spa
A salty spring built a Regency town, Queen Victoria gave it a royal name, and it hosted the world's first lawn tennis club.
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Key information
- County
- Warwickshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Regency architecture, spa waters, the birth of lawn tennis, the Leamington Kitchener range, and a cluster of video game studios
- What locals are called
- Leamingtonians
- Famous people
- Sir Frank Whittle, Major Harry Gem, Dr Henry Jephson
- Football clubs
- Leamington FC, nicknamed the Brakes
About Leamington Spa
From 315 villagers to a royal spa
At the start of the 19th century, Leamington Priors was a quiet village of 315 people beside the River Leam. Within about fifty years it had grown to well over 15,000. The trigger was salt. In 1784 Benjamin Satchwell and William Abbotts opened up a saline spring in the village, and the idea of taking the waters, already a craze in Bath and Cheltenham, arrived in Warwickshire. The Royal Pump Rooms opened in 1814 and visitors poured in. In 1830 the young Princess Victoria stayed, and in 1838, as queen, she granted the town the right to call itself Royal Leamington Spa. Few places can claim a royal prefix, and the town still uses it with pride.
A town designed to look good
Because Leamington grew so quickly, it was planned rather than left to sprawl. The result is wide, tree-lined streets and elegant white stuccoed terraces, many of them Regency and Victorian. The Parade is the grand main street, running down towards the Pump Rooms. Beside them, Jephson Gardens opened in 1834 as Newbold Gardens. In 1846 it was renamed in honour of Dr Henry Jephson, a physician whose advice made the waters fashionable. It is still the town's favourite place for a walk beside the Leam. The Pump Rooms building now houses the town's art gallery and museum, so you can walk through the old bathing halls and look at paintings instead of taking the waters.
Where lawn tennis found its feet
Leamington has a serious claim to be the cradle of lawn tennis. In the 1860s, Major Harry Gem and his friend Augurio Perera played a lawn game combining elements of rackets and the Basque game pelota. They moved to Leamington, and in 1872 they founded a tennis club at the Manor House Hotel. It is widely recognised as the world's first lawn tennis club, though that original club no longer exists. The town's older version of the sport is also still alive. Leamington Tennis Court Club, founded in 1846, plays real tennis, the medieval ancestor of the modern game, and is one of the oldest clubs of its kind still playing. Few small English towns can say they gave tennis two chapters.
Ranges, jets and video games
The town's industry was a good deal more practical than its elegant streets suggest. Flavel's Eagle Foundry made the Leamington Kitchener, a cast-iron cooking range that put an oven, hotplate and water heater in one box. It became a standard fixture of Victorian kitchens. In the 20th century, Sir Frank Whittle, who developed the jet engine, spent his teenage years in the town and attended Leamington College. Today the town has a reputation as a centre for video games. Playground Games, makers of the Forza Horizon racing series, are based in Leamington, and plenty of other studios have grown up around them. That has earned the area the nickname Silicon Spa.
Sport, say and a very good name
Locals are Leamingtonians, and outsiders are regularly told that the first A in the name is silent: it is Lem-ing-tun. Football in the town means Leamington FC, known as the Brakes, who have played non-league football for decades. Warwick Castle and Kenilworth are a short hop away. Leamington is also a convenient base for the area, with fine independent shops, cafes and Regency pubs. It is a good place to start a day out and an even better place to come back to.