Gilsland Spa

Gilsland Spa is the present-day name of the Co-operative Society's hotel at Gilsland, Cumbria. It is named from the sulphurous spring which issues from a cliff below the hotel.

The original hotel was called The Shaws and was built around 1740. Very little is known about these buildings but one contempary drawing suggests that it may have had a tower and may have been based upon a fortified house, known locally as a peel. The original Shaws hotel burned down spectacularly in 1859, and was replaced on a grander scale soon afterwards by G. G. Mounsey. Somewhere around this time, probably simultaneously with the re-naming of the railway station from Rose Hill to Gilsland, the hotel was renamed Gilsland Spa Hotel. During its time the hotel has been a convalescent home and a wartime maternity hospital and is known locally as "The Home".

The hotel has been a popular resort since the eighteenth century. Walter Scott came here in 1797 looking for a wife (and found one) and the opening of the railway station in 1836 galvanised the village. During the later part of the 19th century and the early 20th, Gilsland was thronged with tourists, many of whom were working-class people from Tyneside. Reviewers of the hotel repeatedly stress the free and easy way in which the different classes mixed. One of the main attractions, though for reasons no-one is prepared to admit, has been the Popping Stone an enigmatic stone some half a mile from the hotel in a secluded glade, linked to all sorts of courtship and fertility rituals. Next to the stone was the Kissing Bush, an ancient hawthorn which has sadly died. These relics and the two mineral springs (sulphurous and chalybeate) are situated along the network of wide footpaths known as the Home Walks which provide access to the rugged scenery of the hotel grounds.

The Co-op took over just after 1900 and have run it ever since. The present-day management welcome the use of its large car park by visitors wishing to enjoy the dramatic wooded gorge, and offer food, drink and accommodation.

Lamb, J. n.d. c2001. Gilsland Spa - A Co-operative Centenary History; Co-operative Society (? - no title page) This book can purchased from the hotel.

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