YORKSHIRE was once famous for its spa towns.

During the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century, the aged and infirm flocked to them in the hope that taking the waters would improve their health.

Places such as Harrogate, Boston Spa and Ilkley, once small rural villages, expanded into grand Georgian and Victorian towns following the promotion of their health-inducing spa waters.

Some drank the water – which in many cases was enriched with essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium and sodium – whilst others plunged into the icy waters in the hope of easing their joint problems, arthritis and other aches and pains.

It may well, therefore, come as a surprise to find that a village locally also made a bid for spa status.

In the early 1830s Joshua Clapham – a farmer of Whitley House, Whitley Head, in Steeton – opened what he described as the “celebrated Whitley Head Spa” on the outskirts of the village. It was “fitted up with two baths for the accommodation of both sexes apart, and refreshment and dressing rooms”.

The spa was promoted in the regional press: “The medicinal virtues of the water are highly recommended by the Faculty, and the baths are much frequented and bid fair to eclipse the far famed Ilkley Spa”.

Testimonials were published in the press to encourage clients, such as the one written on August 14, 1839, by Mr John Newton of Spring Gardens, Keighley: “In gratitude for the astonishing cure wrought upon me by the use of the waters, and also to acquaint all those similarly affected where a remedy is to be found, I beg to state that I was so afflicted with a scorbutic complaint (tiredness and weakness of the limbs) and by washing and drinking a few times my flesh was restored.”

He goes on to conclude that his sister, who suffered from the same affliction, was also cured after only three visits to take the waters at the spa.

The treatment must have been of some benefit to Mr Newton as two years later, at the age of 70, he was still working as an overlooker in a Keighley mill.

However, not everything at the Steeton Spa went as well as expected.

The Leeds Mercury published a letter reporting that “an analysis of the mineral spa lately discovered at Whitley Head, near Steeton, showed that it possesses few medicinal properties.”

By the mid-1840s the spa was clearly struggling and so towards the end of the decade Clapham re-branded it by changing the name from the Whitley Head Spa to the New Brighton Baths.

He must have been hoping that by associating his venture with Brighton, the spa town on the south coast and one-time haunt of the Prince Regent, it would go some way to restoring its fortunes.

But unfortunately the small stone building in the middle of the field, on the windswept tops above Steeton, was a far cry from its namesake’s grand pavilions.

The small spa struggled on for a few more years before Joshua Clapham decided that the cost of maintaining and staffing it was no longer profitable.

After his death in 1864 the spa building was pulled down and the baths filled in.

The stone was probably salvaged and used in the construction of a new farmhouse and buildings that are still known today as Brighton House.

And so although the spa has long since been forgotten, its name still lives on.