Monument record MWX4259 - Radipole Spa

'Radipole Spa' marked on the 1840 Tithe Map. (1) Marked on the first edition OS map as a sulphur spa (2).

Built in 1831. Not until the 1840's is a proprietor listed in a Dorset Directory: John Gill, mineral spring, Radipole Spa (Kelly 1846) but certainly not the creater. The indivudiual behind Radipole Spa venture was John Henning who had acquired Radipole estate, in the period between the compliation of the 1829 and 1830 Land Tax schedules. Whilst ordering the excavations which led to the discovery of sulphurus water recognising unusual qualities in the water, resulting in the spa being planned and built strauight away, with remarkable speed.
Described as a romantic building topped with a crenellated parapet. Its windows and doorways were ecclesiastical in appearance, set in pointed arches. No architect is known suggesting John Henning sketched the design himself, to be fabricated by a particular builder.
The facilities at Radipole - well, pump room and baths - were in separate places, according to reminiscences recorded earlier this century. The well at Radipole was out of doors and water could be sipped in the gardens which ran down to the shore.
With rapid upsurge and a decade of success were followed by a largely undocumented decline under different owners, which had been sold between 1841-46 prepared prior to the sale by Crickmay & Son, architects of Weymouth and Westminster. Eventually being auctioned in 1898 as 'Land belonging to the Trustess of Eliot's Estate', resulting in a factory-sized laundry built on the spa site and later extended.
With the use of Crickmay's plan in conjuction with modern large scale maps, we can give a definitive answer to the question of the sulphur well's whereabouts. It is under the present Jubilee Court flats under flat No. 4 to be precise

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1995, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1994, 34-44 (Serial). SDO94.

<1> Unknown, pre-2004, Collection of Digitised Tithe Maps (Digital archive). SWX8753.

Record last edited

Oct 30 2020 3:03PM