Читать книгу Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - James Conway Walter - Страница 4

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It has been remarked that the discovery of many of our medicinal springs has been due to some romantic incident, or, in other cases, to some occurrence partaking almost of the ludicrous. At the famed Carlsbad, for instance, a princely hunter pursues his stag into the lake where it has sought refuge, whereupon the unusual cries of his hounds, too eagerly breasting the waters, speedily reveal to him the strongly thermal nature of the spring which feeds the lake, and the discovery has benefited the thousands who annually frequent that health-giving resort from almost every land. On the other hand, in the case of our own Bath, although well known to the ancient Romans—as also in the later case of Bolsover—tradition avers that an unhealthy pig, instinctively “wallowing in the mire” produced by the oozing spring, and emerging from the uncleanly bath cured of its ailment, was the humble instrument to demonstrate the health-restoring power of the water, to the subsequent advantage of suffering humanity. Other cases, more or less legendary, might be adduced; let these suffice.

The discovery, however, of the Woodhall water, if leas romantic, is no myth, shrouded in the mystery of a distant past, since it has the advantage of being, comparatively, of so recent a date, that the historian can consult the contemporary testimony of eyewitnesses still living, or of those to whom others have related the particulars from their own personal knowledge. The following account has been thus collected, and put into connected form:—

In the early years of this 19th century there lived a certain John Parkinson, Esquire, a scion of a family of position and wealth in the county, who owned, with other property, the estate of Woodhall. [5] Being of a speculative and enterprising bent of mind, it is said that he became enamoured of three ideas or projects, which he thought he had the means and opportunity of carrying out. One of these was to sink a coal mine, a second was to plant a forest, and a third was to build a city. For the last purpose he purchased from the Crown a tract of fenland, situated between Revesby and Boston, being an outlying allotment of the original ancient parish of Bolingbroke. Here be built (about 1816) a street of houses, which he named New Bolingbroke. The speculation, however, proved a failure, probably owing to the loneliness of the position; and it was not till several years later, when the property had passed into the possession of J. Banks Stanhope, Esq., of Revesby Abbey, who spent much money on needed improvements, that the new “city” became a fairly populous village, as it is at the present time.

Mr. Parkinson’s second project was the planting of a forest. For this purpose he secured a large tract of waste moorland, in the parishes of Roughton and Kirkby, lying to the south of the present road to Horncastle, and within some two miles eastward of Woodhall Spa. This land he planted extensively with fir and oak, and in course of time they became a dense wood. This growth has since then been largely destroyed by fire, or has yielded to the woodman’s axe, and at the present time there are left not more than forty acres of the original “forest,” the rest being chiefly open moor, the whole going by the name of “Ostler’s Plantations,” Mr. Ostler being the agent employed in the work and becoming himself (as will be seen) eventually the proprietor. Thus of two eggs which Mr. Parkinson brooded over, and desired to hatch, one may be said to have been addled, and the other did not prove useful to himself:—

The best laid plans of mice and men

Gang aft agley.

We now come to the third “incubation,” which has, it may fairly be said, proved (though once more, not to himself) a “golden egg.” It has been observed that he had conceived the idea of searching for coal. For this purpose he selected a spot which has since become the site of the Woodhall well. It is said that he was guided in this by the advice of a Mr. J. Clarkson, residing at that time at Moorby, not far from his residence at Bolingbroke, and who had had some previous experience among the Yorkshire coal mines. The boring was begun in the year 1811, and was carried on under the supervision of Mr. Clarkson. When the shaft had reached a depth of about 540ft., there occurred an inrush of clear, salt water, which compelled the excavators to retreat. The work was, however, afterwards resumed, a brick conduit for the water being constructed, and so, at the cost of great labour, and by shifts of men working day and night, without intermission, a depth of over 1,000ft. was attained. It is said (we know not with what truth) that Mr. Parkinson and his agent were induced to go on with the boring to this extent, because the men brought up in their pockets fragments of coal (which they had of course themselves taken down), and the hopes of success were thus buoyed up. When, however, this depth of 1,000ft. had been attained, and no vein of coal discovered, the unfortunate proprietor was compelled, from lack of funds, to abandon the enterprise. The boring to such a depth was, of course, a work extending over a lengthy period, and the occasional exhibition of these fragments of coal by the labourers led to false reports of success being periodically circulated. It is said that there were frequent scenes of great excitement at Mr. Parkinson’s residence; persons of all classes, even the poor, flocking thither to lend their money to him on the bare security of his notes of hand, hoping themselves to derive a large profit from the expected mine. On one occasion the bells of Horncastle Parish Church were rung in the night, announcing the joyful tidings that coal had been found. But, alas! all these hopes were illusory. Mr. Parkinson himself became a ruined man, and many a poor investor lost his all, sunk in the mine. The attempt thus proving abortive, the mine was closed, and remained so for several years, Mr. Parkinson himself disappearing from the scene, and his Woodhall property passing into other hands—the ancestors of the present owners of the estate. As the result of this collapse, other portions of Mr. Parkinson’s property in the neighbourhood also changed hands. Mr. Ostler, who has been already mentioned, had advanced to him large sums of money, and in lieu of repayment he acquired the “Forest,” since in consequence (as I have said) called “the Ostler Plantations,” and which still remains the property of his representatives.

During the making of the shaft a serious accident occurred. Two men were below in the shaft working at the bore, a man being at the top to hoist them, by machinery, to the surface, to be out of danger whenever, in the process of boring, an explosion was about to take place. They had arranged their explosive for a blast, had lighted the fuse, and then gave the signal to be hoisted up; but the man at the mouth of the mine had gone to sleep, their signal was disregarded, and they were left unable to help themselves. The explosion took place; one of them, William East by name, was killed, and his body much mangled; the other man, Tyler, was seriously injured, but escaped with his life. [8a]

A poem was written on the occasion by Mr. John Sharpe, of Kirkstead, [8b] which I here give. The rural muse was somewhat unclassical in those days, and versions vary, but it was in the main as follows:—

It was early one morning, the 15th of June,

I was called from my bed by a sorrowful tune;

With sad lamentations a mother appeared,

And sad were the tidings I then from her heard. [8c] “Our William,” she said, “has been killed in the pit; Another is injured, but not dead yet. By firing some powder to blow up the stone, Poor William was killed, and he died with a groan.” I put on my clothes, and I hastened away. Till I came to the place where poor William lay. He lay on some sacks all covered with gore: A sight so distressing, I ne’er saw before. I inwardly thought, as his wounds were laid bare. How many before had been slain in the war. [8d] In a moment of time he was summoned away; How needful that we, too, should watch and should pray. The Lord help us all through our hopes and our fears, To live to his praise all our days and years.

The pit, once closed, remained so for some years, and there seemed no prospect of anything but loss accruing from the undertaking. But meanwhile, as time passed on, “Mother Earth” was in labour. The water in the shaft gradually accumulated, eventually reaching the surface, and then overflowed, running down an adjoining ditch, which skirted what is now called “Coal-pit Wood.” This overflow naturally attracted attention. Such things as “Spas” were not unknown. There was one at Lincoln, not far from the present Arboretum, and the Woodhall water being found to be salt, as was said, like sea water, several persons tried it for different purposes. A very old man (living, in 1899, at Kirkby-on-Bain) [9a] states that he and several others in that parish used the water as a purgative (a property which it still retains). Others used it as increasing the appetite (one of the effects still remarked). Joseph East, lately resident at Kirkstead, and brother of the man killed in the pit, was sent, as a boy, to get a bottle of it to administer to a sick horse. The Squire, Mr. T. Hotchkin, found it very beneficial for his gout, and the servant, who brought the water for him, mentioned this to a woman at Horsington, named Coo, suffering from rheumatism. By the advice of her doctor, she tried the water, and was completely cured. In October, 1903, died Mrs. Wilson, mother of Robert Wilson, gardener, of Martin Dales, aged 92. She was the oldest patient then living who had baths at Woodhall before the first bath-house was built. There was only a wooden bath, at a charge of 1s. per bath. Many similar [9b] cases are recorded by the older inhabitants, which proved beyond doubt the efficacy of the water in the ailments of man and beast, especially for rheumatism and skin diseases.

This led to the re-opening of the mine shaft about the year 1824. In 1829, or 1830, a small protecting structure was erected, a windlass was put up, which was worked by a horse walking round and round, drawing the water from “the well,” as it came now to be termed, and an open brick tank was constructed in which the poor could dip, a veritable modern Siloam. [9c]

In 1834 a bath house was erected by the late Thomas Hotchkin, Esq., the then owner of Woodhall, and in the following year the Victoria Hotel was built by him, his whole outlay amounting to some £30,000. Provision was thus made for the reception of visitors, and the treatment of their ailments on a scale more than adequate for the public requirements at the time. Dr. Barton, Dr. Scott, and other medical practitioners successively resided at the Spa, but for some years longer (as will be shewn in the next chapter) the difficulty of access prevented any great influx of patients, such as we have seen in more recent times, and a primitive state of things still prevailed, such as in these days can be hardly realised, and Woodhall Spa was probably for some years little known beyond the neighbourhood, or the county.

About sixty years ago a second well (remembered only as little more than a floating, vague tradition) was sunk on other property, not far from the present Mill-lane, near Kirkstead Station. A solitary survivor of the workmen engaged in sinking it died in 1897, well known to the writer. This well was subsequently filled in again, the water being (as was said) too salt for use. It is more probable that the water tasted strongly of iron, as the local water, found within a few feet of the surface, is generally impregnated with this ingredient, so much so, that it commonly “ferrs” water bottles if allowed to stand any time in them, this being the effect of its ferruginous properties.

An account of the well would hardly be complete without some particulars, so far as they can be obtained, of the geological strata which were pierced by the shaft. These are said to have been gravel and boulder clay, Kimmeridge and Oxford clays, Kelloway’s rock, blue clay, cornbrash, limestone, great oolite, clay and limestone, upper Estuarine clay, Lincolnshire oolite, and Northampton sands, Lias, upper, middle, and part of lower.

Of the chemical ingredients of the water, as several accounts have been given by different authorities, it is sufficient to say here that its two most important elements are the iodine and bromine, in both of which it far exceeds any other Spa. The only known water which contains a greater proportion of bromine is that of the Dead Sea, in Palestine.