Royal Pump Room Museum exhibitions

Harrogate's spa workers

Many Harrogate stories focus on celebrity spa visitors and the experiences of genteel cure-seekers. For the first time, this exhibition explores the largely untold stories of Harrogate's workers: the people who built and maintained the town and those whose service sustained the glowing, international reputation of Harrogate's baths, pump rooms, shops and hotels.

Spa visitors reached record levels in the early 20th century, and the town's workforce reflected this economy. Numerically most important sector for women was domestic work, hotel and institutional service, but they also worked in laundries, retailing and dressmaking and millinery. For men, the building trades and the railways provided the biggest source of employment, but many worked in hotels, as gardeners, both private and municipal, as coach- and cab-men and, increasingly in these years, as chauffeurs. The treatments provided at the spa provided work for both men and women and a small number found work as entertainers and musicians.

Many people found employment in hotels, including European workers whose numbers increased over the years.

Curated by historian Dr Paul Jennings, this exhibition will reveal an essential but often neglected group, the workers who made the elegant life of the European spas possible.

Well dressed

Discover Harrogate’s spa story from the 1700s to the 1920s through stunning costume, accessories, objects and images. From embroidered court coats of the 18th century to chic beaded dresses of the 1920s, each section reveals how style evolved alongside the spa’s rise and decline.