History
In 1744, John Shires established Boston as a spa town when he discovered magnesian, limestone and sulphur springs. In those days it was known as Thorp Spa. It declined when Harrogate became very popular as a spa town.
In 1753, a turnpike was built on the Tadcaster to Otley road, which runs through Boston Spa. In the same year, Joseph Taite built a house for the accommodation of visitors in Boston Spa that became the Royal Hotel, which is still standing, but converted into flats and shops. By 1819, Boston Spa had a population of over 600, and several inns and other houses offering accommodation. Spa baths were built to allow visitors to take the waters. On the east bank of the river lies the village of Thorp Arch, which predates Boston Spa by several centuries.
Thorp Arch hosted a World War II Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF Thorp Arch, an ammunition Filling Factory. ROF Thorp Arch closed in 1957. Part of the site is the home of the Northern Reading Room, Northern Listening Service and Document Supply Collection of the British Library. The remainder of the site is occupied by Thorp Arch Trading Estate and two prisons, now combined as Wealstun Prison.
The Boston Spa and Thorp Arch Conservation Area was designated in 1969 and extended across both Boston Spa and Thorp Arch parishes. It was revised in 2009, restricting the boundaries to Boston Spa parish and reshaped to exclude Areas of late-20th-century estate housing to the south of the High Street as they are of insufficient historic significance to merit inclusion and had not been built at the time of designation in 1969. The current conservation area boundary focuses more closely on the historic settlement. The conservation area was also extended to the west to encompass West End, an area of dwellings constructed during World War II to house workers from the nearby Thorp Arch munitions factory. The War had a major effect on Boston Spa's population, society and surroundings, and these buildings stand as a testament to that history.
Read more about this topic: Boston Spa
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)