The Royal Pump Room is a Grade II* listed building in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England.

Amongst the exhibits relating to Harrogate as a spa town are a number of recreated treatment rooms using salvaged original fixtures.

The museum also regularly displays a selection of period costumes from its sizeable and historically significant collection of clothing.

[3][4][5] The Egyptology collection includes a well-preserved sarcophagus, a unique cartonnage mask of Anubis, Stele gravestones, pre-dynastic pottery and other artefacts from later periods of Ancient Egypt.

In 2014, a Great War centenary exhibition was held which featured numerous artefacts and personal memorabilia belonging to local people who served in the conflict.

[6] In late 2013, the Royal Pump Room displayed some of the costumes from ITV's period drama Downton Abbey.

[11] Edmund Deane a physician of York provides evidence that by 1626 the waters of Harrogate's Tewit Well were being used for medicinal purposes.

Betty Lupton (c.1760–1843), dispensed Strong Sulphur Water from a well for approximately six decades at the Pump Room's present site.

It is unclear when this tradition finally ended, but it is known a Mrs Anne Watson, held the title 'The Queen of the Well' after Betty Lupton had died.

It is of an unusual design and features arched openings with a tented roof structure which apparently was to protect the marble basin underneath.

[1] In 1986 another long disused well shaft, which was thought to also date from the 18th century, was rediscovered and reopened by workmen during the refurbishment the Royal Pump Room museum.

The octagonal colonnaded building was designed by Isaac Thomas Shutt whose family owned the Swan Hotel.

The Pump Room was the first project of the newly formed Harrogate Improvement Commissioners, whose aim was to provide a suitable building to house the Old Sulphur Well.

On one of the walls of the building there is an inscribed panel bearing the town's Latin motto Arx celebris fontibus which can translate as "A citadel noted for its springs".

[15] In the heyday of the Pump Room, guests would arrive early in the morning from 7 am until about 9.30 am in order to drink one or two glasses of water.

Hollins' Handbook for Harrogate stated that an Act of Parliament governed the price of the water from the Pump Room.

[16] People from many different social backgrounds would travel from various parts of Great Britain and even Europe, to drink the pump room's water.

The number of people recorded as having drunk Harrogate's spa waters rose at an astonishing rate during the mid 19th century.

[2] 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.

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.

The Great Depression and the economic hardships that followed in its wake had a major effect on visitor numbers to Harrogate's spa rooms.

[2] In addition, changes in medical thinking and social customs in this period resulted in fewer people coming to 'take the waters' in Harrogate.

[21] Yet in August 1939, just weeks before the German invasion of Poland, the Pump Room was still attracting a large number of customers.

Possibly this was due to the government order that forbade the operation of public buildings where large numbers of people could gather e.g. theatres and cinemas.

He wrote "(Harrogate is) the queerest place, with the strangest people in it, leading the oddest lives of dancing, newspaper-reading and dining."

In 2013, Harrogate-born actor Jim Carter gave a talk at the museum in which he discussed his life and acting roles.