page_title: Royal Pump Room, Harrogate
section_title: The 1913 Annexe building
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Pump Room, Harrogate / The Pump Room's history and historical context / The 1913 Annexe building
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Pump Room Museum Glass-fronted appendage at the rear of the octagonal stone building. The museum contains Harrogate's last Bath chair and the original wellhead can be seen in the basement.
context_page_description: The Royal Pump Room is a Grade II* listed building in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. Today it houses the town's museum – operated by Harrogate Borough Council. It was formerly a spa water pump house. It is located in Crown Place in the western part of Harrogate town centre, opposite the town's Valley Gardens park. It is bounded by two streets, Crescent Road and Royal Parade. Today, the Pump Room consists of both the original 1842 stone rotunda and a glazed annexe which was opened in 1913. The Pump Room offered guests of the town an all weather facility where they could drink sulphur water which was pumped on site from a natural spring known as the Old Sulphur Well. The building also had a social element to it as it provided guests with a place to meet friends and get to know others.
context_section_description: The continued popularity of Harrogate's spa waters created the need to expand the Pump Room building. By the 1900s, the Royal Pump Room was experiencing overcrowding on a regular basis. Initially a small temporary structure was erected alongside the 1842 building in an attempt to alleviate the overcrowding. This measure apparently proved to be unsatisfactory to guests and failed to solve the problem. After much public debate on how to deal with the problem, Harrogate Corporation decided to add a permanent extension which would be connected to the 1842 building. In around 1912–13 the new annexe, which was designed by Leonard Clarke (architect), was built. Clarke's elegant design was fully glazed and had a roof tiled with ornate copper fishtail tiles which complement the original building's copper tiles. David Burnett, the then current Lord Mayor of London who also later became the 1st Baronet Burnett of Selborne House, travelled to Harrogate to conduct the annexe's opening ceremony on 7 June 1913. Sadly and somewhat ironically barely a year after the annexe's opening the First World War  had broken out. This resulted in a dramatic and rapid fall in the visitor numbers who were coming to Harrogate as a whole. The Pump Room never recovered from this event and visitor numbers never went back to their pre First World War levels following the return of peace.
caption: Royal Pump Room Annexe's exterior
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