They Travelled Far and Wide

With the purity of Malvern's water being well known, in 1842 Dr James Wilson and Dr James Manby Gully followed a European trend and set up the towns first hydrotherapy (or water cure) establishment. It was located in the heart of Malvern at the Crown Hotel (now a branch of Lloyds Bank). This was the first of a number of these establishments to be set up over the coming years.

At its height many people would travel far and wide to visit Malvern and partake in its water cure. This included many famous people of the time like Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Florence Nightingale. Unfortunately after 25 years its popularity went into decline with people favouring visiting other European Spa Towns instead.

The monument you see here to Dr James Wilson is located close to the site of a previous Victorian monument to him that was demolished in 1948 after falling into disrepair. The original structure, an elaborate spire, resembled a smaller version the Albert Memorial in London. The main body of text you see is a reproduction of the original Victorian dedication that was luckily saved and the inserted photo to its left shows what the original structure looked like (this image is shown on the far side of the monument).

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Europe / UK-England

Lat: 52° 6' 28.58" N
Long: 3° 20' 41.94" W

Elevation: 456 ft

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8G fisheye lens. Mounted on a Nodal Ninja 5 panorama head and R-D16 rotator atop a Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod. Shots taken at 6 positions 60° apart, tilted 15° down and another shot taken looking straight up. Raw files then processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7 before being stitched together using PTGui 10.0.12 Pro and converted using Pano2VR 4.5.3.