When Bonkers Hall was a fashionable spa

Nevill Holt Hall has been many things: the family home of the Cunards, a notoriously abusive prep school, the chief model for Bonkers Hall. But in the 18th century it was a fashionable spa.

This feature from the Leicester Daily Mercury (Friday 21 September 1934) tells the story

When Society Descended on a Leicestershire Spa 

The Doctor Bottled its Waters and Let His Imagination Go

In a wood in one of the highest parts of Leicestershire, where wild pigeons seek the topmost branches of fir trees, rabbits scamper unheeding of alien eyes through an autumn carpet of leaves, and an earthy tang brings a curious peace to traffic-jangled nerves.

That is the sylvan setting of an ancient spa where once Society leaders used to flock to sip the health-giving waters.

You will find it Neville Holt, a few miles from Market Harborough, but its fame died with the crinoline. 

To-day it is a mere trickle as a result of a dry summer, and its crumbling brickwork is a danger adventurous boys of the neighbouring Neville Holt School.

How the spa became nationally famous is a curious story. In 1728 a tenant farmer of the owner of the estate of Neville Holt Italian Count Migliorucci, dug a pond in Holt Wood where his cattle could slake their thirst.

Much to his dismay, however, after all his hard work, the cattle would not drink the water. 

Curious as to the reason, he had the water analysed and it was found to contain a medicinal mineral known as nitro-alluminous.

He imparted this information to Count Migliorucci, who caused an arch to be built over the spring, making it a grotto of two compartments.

A Doctor Short of Sheffield came to hear of this wonderful spa, which was found to cure all inflammatory diseases, and as result of energetic advertising in London and elsewhere it soon became famous. 

Society and fashion hurried to the spot in search of a cure for their ailments, either real or imaginary and a road was constructed from Neville Holt to the wood for them to ride in their carriages to the spa. A search is now necessary to find the road, which is moss and weed covered through long disuse.

The water was bottled and sent to London for sale. Dr Short, who was actually something of a knave, advertised on a pamphlet that the spa waters could cure among other things "enlarged liver through excess of drinking anaemia and even corns."

His illustration of some of the cures effected could scarcely be credited by even the most gullible modern people.

The popularity of the slow-flowing health-spring waned after a few years. Perhaps the doctor’s patients found him out! 

The pamphlets are in the possession of Mr. F.S. Phillips, headmaster of Neville Holt School, and form a curious link with yesteryear.

F.S. Phillips, it turned out, was no more to be believed than was Dr Short of Sheffield. (There's a heavy content warning - child abuse - for that link, particularly the comments below the story.)