page_title: History of Ilkley
section_title: Spa town and the railway
hierarchical_section_title: History of Ilkley / Spa town and the railway
caption_attribution_description: The Grove, Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Sunday 23 September 2007
context_page_description: Ilkley is a town and civil parish in West Yorkshire, in the north of England. It has been inhabited since at least the Mesolithic period; was the site of a Roman fort, and much later an early example of a spa town. In more recent times it serves as a residential district within the travel to work areas of Bradford, Leeds and Keighley.
  According to the probably outdated history of the 19th century clergyman Robert Collyer, Ilkley takes its name from "Llecan, the old British word for rock", this, presumably, alluding to the craggy prominences of the area such as the Cow and Calf on Ilkley Moor.
context_section_description: In the 17th and 18th centuries the town gained a reputation for the efficacy of its water. The Middleton family constructed and for many years maintained White Wells, an early example of a spa building containing dressing rooms and a bath fed from a spring, in the eighteenth century. The Middletons encouraged visitors by permitting shooting on the manor and fishing in the river. Prior to the spa boom, however, Ilkley was "a little, old and ragged village" of single storey thatched cottages. 
  In the 19th century the town became established as a fashionable spa town, with the construction a mile to the east of the town, at Wheatley, of the vast Ben Rhydding Hydro or Hydropathic Establishment between 1843 and 1844. Tourists flocked here to 'take the waters' and bathe in the cold water spring. Wheatley today is called Ben Rhydding after the Hydro (since demolished).
  Development based on the Hydro movement, and upon the establishment of a number of convalescent homes and hospitals, was accelerated by the establishment of a railway connection from Leeds and Bradford in 1865. Charles Darwin underwent hydropathic treatment at Wells House when his book On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859, staying with his family at the nearby North View House (now Hillside Court). Other Victorian visitors to the town include Madame Tussaud. Today, the only remaining Hydro is the white cottage known as White Wells House, which can be seen and visited on the edge of the moor over-looking the town.
caption: The Grove, Ilkley's principal shopping street, designed with wide pavements for promenading
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