Harrogate, the very picture of genteel Yorkshire respectability, owes its airy, planned appearance and early prosperity to the discovery of Tewit Well in 1571. This was the first of over eighty ferrous and sulphurous springs that, by the nineteenth century, were to turn the town into one of the country's leading spas. Monuments to its past splendours still stand dotted around town, with Harrogate's spa heritage beginning at the Royal Baths Assembly Rooms on Crescent Road, built in 1897, where you can still take a Turkish bath in the plush, tiled Victorian surroundings. The contemporaneous Royal Hall, built as a concert hall, stands across the way, while just around the corner from the Assembly Rooms stands the Royal Pump Room, built 1842, in Crown Place, over the sulphur well that feeds the Royal Baths. The museum here re-creates something of the town's health-fixated past and also lets you sample the water; free guided walks leave here several times a week between Easter and October. To the southwest, the 120-acre Valley Gardens are the venue for the annual Spring Flower Show and Sunday band concerts in summer, while many visitors also make for the Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens the main showpiece of the Northern Horticultural Society.
