Tenby, a coastal
town in Pembrokeshire, Wales, was the site of one of the most important events
in Tudor history. It was in Tenby that Jasper Tudor hid from the forces of
Henry IV with his teenage nephew Harri in the summer of 1471. The fugitives
were shielded by the loyal Welsh folk and by the mayor, Thomas White, in
tunnels under the town. It was in one of Thomas White’s ships that Jasper and
young Harri were smuggled out of Tenby toward the relative safety of the
continent.
When Jasper’s
nephew later became King Henry VII, he showed his gratitude to Tenby in the
form of royal grants that turned the small Welsh town into a center of
international trade. For more than two centuries the small costal town thrived
as one of Britain’s most important ports. Turkish merchants and Irish pirates
alike moored anchor in Tenby’s harbor and traded along its docks.
Alas, disaster
struck Tenby during the middle of the 17th century in the form of
the bubonic plague. Approximately half the population of the town – more than
500 people -- died in one virulent outbreak in the winter of 1650, and Tenby
(like many small towns decimated by the plague) couldn’t recover from such
drastic losses. By the time the Georgian kings began their reign the once-booming
town of Tenby was mostly an empty shell of abandoned buildings. John Wesley,
the founder of the Methodist Church, came through Tenby during his efforts as a
traveling preacher and reported that, "Two-thirds of the old town is in
ruins or has entirely vanished. Pigs roam among the abandoned houses and Tenby
presents a dismal spectacle”.
Nevertheless,
happier times were just around the corner for Tenby. The town would enjoy a
resurgence in the Regency era thanks to the efforts of one man -- a merchant banker named Sir William Paxton. With brilliance
and foresight, Paxton thought to turn Tenby and its lovely white beaches into a
spa town for sea bathing, in the likeness of Brighton or Weymouth.
With that in mind, Paxton began
investing heavily in Tenby property at the beginning of the 19th
century, buying a significant portion of the buildings in the older part of the
town. He wrote a friend about his plan to “lay out some thousands in building lodging houses etc. which being much
wanted, may be of some benefit”. When Paxton informed the town council of his
hopes for Tenby in 1805, they nearly wept with gratitude and bent over
backwards to help him along.
Paxton
already knew exactly who he needed to remake Tenby and design a "fashionable bathing establishment suitable for the
highest society" – one of
the most renowned architects of the era, Samuel Pepys Cockerell. This was the
same architect who had recently designed Paxton’s splendid new mansion, Middleton Hall, just a few years prior. Paxton
also turned to his estate agent, an engineer named James Grier, and his landscaper, Samuel
Lapidge, for help.
He knew he could trust the genius
of Cockrell, Grier, and Lapidge because they had turned Middleton Hall and its
gardens into one of the marvels of Pembrokeshire. Not only was the mansion
elegant and charming, it was modernized to the hilt. There were elevated
reservoirs of water from natural springs behind the residence which filled a
lead cistern on the hall’s roof, giving Paxton’s mansion the luxuries of hot running
water and flushing toilets. There reservoirs were moreover used to create an unparalleled
water park on the grounds surrounding the mansion. A clever network of dams,
sluices, bridges and cascades moved the spring water from the reservoirs
into the multiple ponds, lakes, and streams in Middleton Hall’s gardens.
In a stroke of luck, Paxton had
discovered a chalybeate spring on his estate. The heated, mineral-rich
waters of this spring not only supplied the warmth for Paxton’s baths and hothouses,
they were considered medicinal. Ferruginous
water was believed to provide a cure for colic,
melancholy, and “the vapours” because it “loosened the clammy humours of the
body, and dried the over-moist brain". Moreover, drinking the mineral
water “killed flat worms in the belly” and could make “the lean fat [and] the
fat lean”.
Paxton came up with the idea of
piping the ferruginous waters into Tenby, in order to offer the discerning
tourist health-granting mineral waters like those provided at Bath or other spa
towns. This would give Tenby a real edge in the tourist trade, since other
places could offer only one or the other of these treatments; Bath had healing waters, but no seashore, while most
seaside resorts could boast no mineral water. Tenby would thus become the place
to be if one wanted to restore one’s health via mineral waters and sea-bathing.
While he was it, Paxton
commissioned Grier to come up with a plan to bring fresh drinking water into
Tenby, as well as the mineral waters from Middleton Hall. They had already
created watering system in the town of Carmarthen, where Paxton had formerly
been mayor, using iron pipes and the techniques they had refined on Paxton’s
estate, so they knew it could be done. Even in its heyday Tenby had a constant problem
with obtaining sufficient fresh water for its residents, and Paxton knew an
abundance of potable water was crucial for building up the tourist trade. He
was determined to use cutting edge innovations to
turn Tenby into the perfect resort town, and make it the center of tourism in
Wales.
In this same
vein, the bath house Grier and Cockerell designed for Tenby was not only
aesthetically pleasing, it was technologically brilliant:
The bath
house was in fact not only a fancy establishment built by a much respected
architect to receive the best company, it was also a remarkable feat of
engineering. The top floor was on street level and contained the elegant
assembly room, a bar, the vestibule mentioned above and two bedrooms for those
who were too infirm to be lodged in the town of Tenby. One floor down were
three hot baths with attached dressing rooms, a pump room, a vapour bath and a
shower bath. The hot baths were fed by a water-tank placed under the vestibule
where the water was heated by a furnace. The bottom floor was fitted out with
two cold plunging baths, one for the ladies and the other for gentlemen. Four
private baths with attached heated dressing rooms were available for those
wishing to bathe in the most exclusive privacy. This floor was below the level
of high tide and the baths were fed by sea water from a large
reservoir that was refilled with every new high tide. The waste water from the
baths was piped into two large basins on either side of the reservoir which
were emptied at low tide … It was equipped with a handsome assembly room
commanding a view of the sea and harbor and a spacious vestibule "for
servants and attendants on the bathers to wait in without mixing with the
company". Its front entrance was adorned with a quotation from
Euripides' "Iphigenia in Tauris" which, translated, still reads;
"All man's pollution does the sea cleanse".
As well as arranging the best
sea-bathing apparatus and baths for Tenby, Paxton bought a local inn and
renovated it, creating very stylish accommodations for the Beau Monde and upper
crust merchant class whom he hoped would visit. Additionally, he had
‘picturesque’ yet functionally modern cottages built alongside the baths for
those guests who would prefer to spend their summers in Tenby ‘taking the
waters’ from the convenience of a more private residence. He furthermore widened
the main roads, as well as building livery stables and coach houses, to promote
ease of travel and to meet the needs of the wealthy visitor to Tenby.
Paxton’s sea-bathing resort
opened in July 1806, but he knew a nice beaches, bathing facilities, and
mineral water were only half the battle to bring in tourism. The tourists
needed something to do. Thus, Paxton set out to provide easy access to, or even outright
create, places to visit on short pleasure outings. The yen for brief forays to
nearby areas of interest started in the Regency era and would become a central
feature of Victorian tourism.
With
day-trippers in mind, Paxton invested in turnpike roads and bought several coaching inns spanning as far to the east as Swansea
and as far to the north as Narberth. He built bath houses on his own estate,
well-warmed with furnaces and chalybeate spring waters, which he made open to
the public. He also commissioned Cockerell to build what became known as Paxton's
Tower, an ornate garden folly in memorial to Lord Horatio Nelson, the hero
of Trafalgar, on his property to complement the immense water garden and create
a delightful site for tourist jaunts. The tower was an ideal place to take in
the breathtaking views over the Tywi valley, with the additional feature of a
banqueting room that would allow more formal receptions and entertainments.
It is most likely Paxton who
published a small guide book, "The Tenby guide; Comprehending such
information relative to that town and its vicinity as could be comprehended
from ancient and modern authorities", which detailed all these various
wonders to enjoy in the area. He was probably the mastermind behind the
numerous magazine and newspaper articles praising Tenby as THE place for
seashore holidays in Wales, as well.
In 1814 Paxton paid for the construction of a road overlooking Tenby harbor
atop Romanesque arches that is still in use today. The new road served the
twofold purpose of “providing a good approach to his bath house” and allowing “the
clientele of that establishment to observe the activity in the harbor without
having to mix with the workmen and the public.” One wanted lovely vistas, not
the reality of the laboring classes, on one’s holiday! Preserving class
boundaries was as important to the Georgian tourist as it was for the future
Victorian visitors … maybe even more so. Paxton, born middle-class and now
ascended to the nouveau riche elite, was profoundly aware of these
sociocultural niceties and pandered to them.
The one failure in Paxton’s investment plan for Tenby was a local
theater. Built to entertain the tourists, it opened at the beginning of August
1810 and featured a long-standing favorite Georgian farce, “The Wonder: a Woman Keeps a Secret” by Susanna Centlivre, and
John O'Keeffe’s comedic opera “The Poor
Soldier”. In spite of a good start, the theater only lasted eight years
before closing down. A theater, it was speculated, would encourage ‘vice’ in
Tenby and was a source of contention among some of the moralistic tourists and
locals. When ceased its performances in 1818, Paxton promised to use the
building for something “unobjectionable” in the future, and reimbursed the
other investors out of his own funds.
Paxton poured a huge outlay of
money into Tenby and Pembrokeshire, but it proved to be a wise gamble. His
efforts to turn Tenby into one of the premier watering holes in Great Britain
succeeded beyond even his hopeful expectations. It thrived in the Regency, and
the Victorians would treasure it, calling it the “Naples of Wales”. Mary Ann
Bourne would write a popular guide book about Tenby, pointing out that it was the
’judicious choice of rank and fashion’ as a seaside destination. It remains a
favorite tourist destination today.
Kyra Kramer
Sources
Strother,
Edward. 1721. Dr. Radcliffe's practical
dispensatory: containing a complete body of prescriptions, fitted for all
diseases, internal and external, digested under proper heads. 4th
ed. Rivington, London.
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About the Author
Kyra Cornelius Kramer is an American
anthropologist living in south Wales best known for her work on Tudor history.
Her first historical novel, Mansfield Parsonage,
a retelling of Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield
Park from the point of view of Mary Crawford, was released earlier this
year. You can read her blog at kyrackramer.com, follow her on Twitter
@KyraKramer, or like her Facebook author page.
