A blameless, useful, venerable man.
The advocacy of these and other Leamingtonians caused the town to advance rapidly into public favour, and the discovery of other wells up till the year 1819 served to provide ample accommodation for bathers and others, making the place one of the most famous health–resorts in England.
In these days, indeed, Leamington might well have been called “The Bath of the Midlands,” for to the town were attracted much the same classes of invalids and fashionable folk as were drawn to its more famous Somersetshire prototype; and, indeed, Leamington must have been then even a gayer and more fashionable town than it is at the present time.
From the Leamington of the last few years of the eighteenth century to the flourishing town of to–day is, indeed, a far cry. Then, according to one authority, it was little more than a small sequestered village, to which the mail–coaches came no nearer than Warwick, and any letters or parcels for the inhabitants could only be obtained by some enterprising villager going over to the latter place for them.
And even in the first decade of the nineteenth century Macready, the great actor, writes thus of the place in his diary. Referring to Birmingham he says: “The summer months were passed there, diversified by a short stay at Leamington, then a small village consisting only of a few thatched houses—not one of them tiled or slated; the Bowling Green being the only one where very moderate accommodation could be secured. There was in process of erection a hotel of more pretention, which I fancy was to be the ‘Dog’ or ‘Greyhound,’ but which had some months of work to fit it for the reception of guests.”
It was in the year 1819 that the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., visited Leamington from Warwick, where he was staying with the Earl of Warwick; and three years later the Princess Augusta came to the town to take a course of the waters, and from that time the place may be considered to have been firmly established in public favour. Quoting from a contemporary writer, “where but a few years earlier cattle grazed undisturbedly, yellow corn waved, and the plough–boy whistled over the Leam, we now behold with surprise and pleasure extensive mansions arising as if by magic, and tastefully decorated shops presenting every Metropolitan article of fashion and convenience.”
Some other famous visitors who came to Leamington in the early years of the last century were the Princess Victoria, in company with her mother the Duchess of Kent; and later John Ruskin, who testified to the benefit derived from a six weeks’ course of the Chalybeate Spring as follows: “My health is in my own hands, I have gone back to brown potatoes and cherry pie!”
But Leamington of to–day owes a good deal less of its popularity to its springs than it does to its beautiful situation, and the fact of it being such an excellent centre for interesting excursions; whilst hunting people regard the place as an almost unequalled sporting district, from the circumstance that a fashionable life can be enjoyed there in conjunction with hunting six days a week, and the choice of as many packs. Warwickshire, indeed, has been called the third best hunting county in England, and Leamington must take even a higher place as a centre for hunting folk.