This wonderful building is about a five-minute walk from where I live (okay, I’m not fooling anybody, it’s one minute in a car but it’s all uphill), and it’s a fascinating place.
The first record of the building being used as a small round bath fed by an underground spring was 1701. It was still showing on maps in the 1790s but by the early 1800s, it was depicted as a pile of stones with a pool in the hollow.
In 1816, Charles Herbert Pierrepoint resigned as an MP and succeeded to the second Earl of Manvers. His estate included the old tumbledown Birley Spa. However, local people knew of the curative power of the spring at Birley and persuaded the Earl to develop the site. It was the perfect location to attract visitors as it was close to the nearby towns of Sheffield and Chesterfield.
The building was designed to make best use of the natural topography with first-floor access to the hotel at ground level, and bathing pools underneath, all fed by the natural springs that exist in the area to this day.
There was a cold stone bath, with steps into it – this still remains today. I have been inside the building, tasted the waters which are truly icy cold and delicious, but it is quite scary.
The spa opened on 1 May 1843 where seven baths were built, but despite best advertising efforts as a bathing venue (they didn’t have Facebook then!), it never became a financial success.
The place is currently undergoing some changes after the local community created a fuss that stopped Sheffield City Council from selling it. A volunteer group called Friends of Birley Spa take care of it, and work alongside Sheffield Countryside Conservation Trust and Park Rangers.
And latterly, of course, some crazy author used it as a setting for murder…