Ben Rhydding Hydro

The Victorian history of hydrotherapy in the UK is traced back to Richard Tappin Claridge, an asphalt contractor and captain in the Middlesex Militia, who published and lectured in the early 1840s on an approach to the supposed curative properties of water developed by Vincenz Priessnitz in Gräfenberg (now Lázně Jeseník), Austrian Silesia.

[1] The curative properties of water predate Victorian hydrotherapy, not least in Ilkley, which had had since the very early 18th-century an outdoor spa bath, White Wells, said to be a cure for 'bad eyes', 'tumours and sores', 'scrophula' and 'all cases where the spine is affected'.

Stansfeld, his brother, a county court judge in Halifax, and two others, raised £30,000 to build a Scottish baronial architecture style hotel on high ground south of the River Wharfe, east of Ilkley, laying the foundation stone on 26 September 1843.

A November 1884 meeting of the proprietors of the Hydro board, however, claimed it was a complete success, and voted £10 to the mission of Father Mathew, a teetotalist reformer, and by a subscription of £150 to a Hydropathic Fever Hospital.

[12][13][e] Macleod introduced Victorian Turkish baths at Ben Rhydding[15] in 1859,[16] following the introduction of this facility by Richard Barter at his St Ann's Hydropathic Establishment in Blarney, County Cork, Ireland.

In May 1871, William MacLeod reached agreement with the Otley and Ilkley Joint Committee responsible for the railway, to erect at his expense a stone-built waiting room and office serving his clientele.

[26] The Bradford Observer notes that William Macleod "may be said to be the person who developed the practice of hydropathic treatment to its present standing; and he very largely contributed to making Ilkley what it is in this respect.

[29][30] Metcalfe names a number of successor physicians at Ben Rhydding – Drs Lucy, Little, Johnstone and Scott – whilst noting that "none of these made a success of the place like Dr.