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A GENERAL
SURVEY
Although the visitor to Harrogate comes essentially to take the
waters it should not be forgotten that he is coming to one of the
beauty spots of England. It is one of the dispensations of kindly
fate that the Wells which make Harrogate famous come to the surface
in a scene made fair by nature and endowed by art. It might very
easily have been otherwise, for Mother Earth is no respecter of
places, and it would have been very like one of her caprices to have
bestowed these health-giving waters on a district on which she had
lavished no other favours. But it is one of the charms of Harrogate
that if you omit all reference to the Wells and Baths and Springs,
if you forget for a moment that it ranks as one of the greatest of
the Spas of the world, you still have left a town of majestic
buildings, wide and spacious streets, shop: equalling the famous
marts in London's Bond Street, with Hotels, Parks, Gardens, grassy
green lawns and tree-edged squares, which lift the town into a
category by itself and invest it with an air of beauty and solid
worth rarely encountered in England. The streets crowded with
holiday folk, the smart equipages, the bustle and animation in the
thoroughfares, the numerous Hotels, the open spaces with their
bandstands, all impress the visitor that Harrogate is a high-class
resort-a pleasure resort as well as a Spa, set first in the midst of
some of the noblest scenery our land contains, and then built on a
design to fall in with nature's gorgeous framework.
It
is this aspect of Harrogate which has perhaps been overlooked. As a
residential centre, as a holiday resort, as the headquarters for
exploring the moors and valleys and woods which engirdle the town,
for traversing the rivers which thread through rocky gorge and
park-like meadow, for making excursions to Knaresborough, to
Pateley Bridge for its glorious surroundings, to Fountains Abbey,
Bolton Abbey, Selby Abbey, Rievaulx Abbey, and Byland Abbey – (how
these old monks had an eye for beauty when they planted their
religious houses in these charming vales) - and many other famous
places, Harrogate may put forward a claim second to no inland city
in our island. The town itself is full of delights. There are few
more animated scenes than its principal streets in the early
forenoon, when everybody seems to find the shops an irresistible
attraction. Behind the glittering windows the wealth of an Empire
is represented-curios from far-off lands, ivories from Japan and our
own Eastern possessions, silks and laces and damasks and rare woods
from the bazaars of the East and silver and gold which would exhaust
the ransom of a King. Up and down the streets the people walk, and
if one were to take a record of them what a chapter of modern
history might be written. Here is an Ambassador who has held in his
hands the threads of our Imperial destinies at many a foreign
Chancellery ; there, is a grave-looking man who has borne the burden
of Europe in far-off India ; yonder a General who won distinction
when Lord Kitchener smashed the Dervish power in the Sudan; while
Peers, Bankers, Diplomats, Admirals, Generals, Statesmen, judges,
mix with the throng and are lost in the ever-changing scene.
Let
it be granted that all these distinguished visitors have come to
take the waters it is tolerably certain that the beauties of the
town, its social amenities, its remoteness from the outer world, the
exhilaration and sparkle of its air, the brilliant company they know
they will meet, have a great deal to do with their selection of
Harrogate for their " cure." In other words, if the visitor never
went out of the town ; if, besides taking his prescribed cure, he
merely promenaded the streets, sat in the Valley Gardens, rested in
the hall of his hotel, and observed the multitude, he would find
Harrogate so full of interests that every day would bring new
pleasures into his life and endow him with an experience to be
remembered in the years to come. With the exception of London
itself, it is probable that more celebrities-the men and women who
make history-are to be seen in Harrogate in the season than in any
other town in England.
Nothing is wanting to minister to those who love the gaieties of
life. If the visitor could see the surrounding country the whole
panorama of this corner of Yorkshire is at his disposal. The Valley
Gardens provide a scene unparalleled out of the exclusive purlieus
of Hyde Park. Here the rank and fashion and beauty of the modern
world may be seen. The trim cut lawns, the glowing beauties of the
flower beds, the ripple of water, the shade of the trees, the
strains of music from the bandstand, are full of the spirit of peace
and calm.
The
Royal Hall, with the renowned Municipal Orchestra under the baton of
Mr. Julian Clifford, the Opera House, the ubiquitous Picture
Palaces, all make their diversified appeal. During the season the
stars of the theatrical world make a point of including Harrogate in
their tours, and whether it be the drama or music it may be stated
as a fact that Harrogate takes the pick of the London productions
and provides a round of amusements which offer unlimited variety to
those who would keep in touch with all that is best in the
entertainment world. There is no need for a single dull hour in
Harrogate. If the visitor desires the solitude of the woods, he may
sit among the whispering pine trees and feast his gaze on the
sun-dabbled grass between the stretching aisles ; he may walk as far
as Birk Crag and look out over a vista of country which stretches
almost to the distant sky-line ; and if it be music or entertainment
he would like, he may come back into the town and find it in any of
the pleasure gardens and spacious halls whose doors are ever open.
So
far with regard to the town itself. Now what about its surroundings
? It is here, indeed, where Nature has showered some of her fairest
gifts on Harrogate. The town is situated on the very edge of a wild
moorland country where iron-bound hills rise above heath and fell
and suggest the thought that they are mighty bastions flung by the
hand of the Creator to hold up the very town itself. All the
beauties of Yorkshire are clustered within a few miles of our
borders. Everything the scenic ,artist can provide in the shape of
slumbering valley threaded by glistening river, massive woods which
skirt the road and crown the hills, stretching view of heath and
crag and moor, is here thrown into the eye of the visitor.
Let
us look at some of these beauty spots in detail. Knaresborough is
one of the jewels in our diadem-not merely for the amenities of its
boating, the hoary tradition of its Castle, and the romantic
sentiment of its wells and caves, but for the exquisite grouping
which makes some of its views-as the one from the bridge-among the
sweetest scenes on which the eye can dwell.
Then there is Ripon, a quaint old city which reeks of mediaeval
sentiment, crowned by its stately Minster ; and just beyond the City
walls, so to speak, is the fairy vision of Fountains Abbey, one of
the sweetest poems in stone ever chiselled by monkish fingers,
standing there in the perfect peace and calm of its sylvan setting
like a picture out of dreamland.
Bolton Abbey is but a short distance from Harrogate, over the rising
moors, then down the hill to where in the gorge-like valley the
Leeds reservoirs gleam like jewels on the fair bosom of the earth ;
and then on and up again, over vast expanses of heathery moor, in
the wildest solitudes of our land, past the grouse moors where many
a record bag has been made to put to shame the boasted superiority
of the Scottish Shootings, till the road falls again into the valley
and the fields take the place of the moors, and first the gleaming
Wharfe appears, then the cloistered beauty of Bolton Abbey - where
for many years King George opened his grouse-shooting season -
bursts upon the view by the side of the tinkling waters.
Further afield there is the ride to Selby - where the Abbey boasts a
connection with the Washington family of deep suggestiveness in
these days of our alliance with the United States.
Indeed, there is hardly an end to the infinite variety of the
country around Harrogate. The rivers of the district alone would
make a paradise -the stately Wharfe; from Bolton Abbey to Wetherby
and Boston Spa ; the Swale at Ripon ; the Yore at Boroughbridge ;
and most beautiful of all, the Nidd, flowing as near to Harrogate as
Knaresborough, through some of the most beautiful country even
Yorkshire is able to provide. To the trout-fisher, and particularly
the fly-fisher, Harrogate is a centre which can vie with any other
in England.
To
one who loves Harrogate, and knows it, who has seen its life of
gaiety and variety, who has gone forth and explored the wonderland
which lies at its doors and has come back in the setting of the sun
and seen the radiance flashing on its domes and towers and spires,
its beauty will never fade. Like Zion, it is beautiful for
situation. It was favoured by nature, and it has been improved by
art. In itself it is a noble city, fit home for those who come from
the ends of our Kingdom to take its waters and make the cure ; yet
not the least of its claims is based on its wealth of noble
views-briar and brake and flood and fell, swelling hills which rise
into the grim and rocky elevations which are the backbone of our
land; and then the mighty moorland spaces where tiny streams leap
from shelf to shelf till they gather strength and force their way in
brimming flood and eddying whirl to the valleys below, and so
through the Plain of York to the distant sea. Surely, none who see
these things will deny that Harrogate is one of the beauty spots of
England.
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