Pop videos and strange baths

There have been many changes to the building since it was opened in 1814, as two of our photographs (above) illustrate.

The building has also been put to some strange uses. For instance in the 1990s a video for the Mick Jagger song Sweet Thing was filmed in the baths.

Roger Cleal of Warwick recently went on an organised walk around the Jephson Gardens led by Laura Smith, the community ranger. He said: “I was talking to another visitor and he told me about this video for the Mick Jagger song Sweet Thing which was filmed in both the Pump Room baths and the old swimming pool. (To view it visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXZUr3v6gNo)

“It’s fun to see the old building put to a different use.”

One of the photographs above shows another bizarre use of the baths. It is a picture of someone receiving treatment in an electrical bath there about 1910-1916.

Former Courier/Weekly News reporter Robert Collins found the photograph on the internet. He said : “It was taken in the baths, apparently, but I’ve no idea what is happening. Do any readers know what happened? It will date from the days when Leamington was a recognised centre of quack medicine.”

The local history exhibition in art gallery and museum displays medical equipment formerly used in the building for treatments.

Our top photograph from the collection of staff photographer Jass Lall was taken in the late 1930s from Newbold Terrace. It shows the tower which was added in the 1860s but demolished around 1950 (see the present day photo).

The Pump Room is a Grade II listed building , one of several spa baths opened in Leamington between the late-18th and mid-19th centuries.

People would travel from throughout the country, and indeed Europe, to benefit from treatments using the town’s healing waters. When ‘taking the waters’ became less fashionable after the mid-19th century the Pump Rooms became Leamington’s only surviving spa facility, later also being extended to include the town’s public swimming pool. After a major redevelopment in 1997 - 99 the building now houses Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, a public library, cafe and assembly rooms.

In 1890 a further large public swimming pool was opened. An annexe was added to the south of the main assembly room in 1910 and another to the north some years later.