Hockley Spa Rooms

Robert Clay and his wife, Letitia, an ageing couple from Cheltenham, retired to Hockley in Essex, in 1838. The Clays, who had been users of Cheltenham's natural waters, rented a cottage in Hockley and dug a water well in its garden. Letitia, a chronic asthmatic, found relief in drinking the water and declared it to be medicinal; they renamed their cottage Hockley Spa Lodge. In order to capitalise on their discovery, and to emulate the kind of success that spas in Bath and Royal Tunbridge Wells had achieved, they sought advice from a local businessman, William Summersall, who later became the manager of the spa, on how to build a pumping room to access larger amounts of water for the wider…