A new organisation has been established to explore how Harrogate can build on its historic identity as a spa town, with plans covering its mineral springs, historic buildings, green spaces, cultural life and connections with other spa towns across Britain and Europe.
Harrogate Spa Society, founded by Harrogate-based designer and creative director George Eglese, has been incorporated as a Community Interest Company. It aims to reconnect Harrogate with the traditions that helped establish its reputation as one of Europe’s notable spa destinations, while exploring how that heritage could contribute to the town’s future.
The Society brings together work across water, nature, health, culture, heritage and design. Its approach draws inspiration from the pioneering and experimental spirit that developed around Harrogate’s mineral waters, when the town became associated with health, architecture, entertainment, landscape and international exchange.
Eglese has drawn on several years of research, creative projects and collaboration with organisations and individuals across Harrogate. The Society’s vision has also been informed by visits to historic spa towns in Europe, where he has explored how their distinctive cultures, landscapes and traditions are being renewed for contemporary life.
The launch comes 400 years after the publication of Edmund Deane’s Spadacrene Anglica, or the English Spa Fountain, an account of Harrogate’s mineral waters published in 1626.
Three initiatives at the heart of the Society
The Society has outlined three principal initiatives: Harrogate Cure, Spa Commons and Harrogate Wildbelt. Together, they are intended to explore how the town’s historic spa identity can inform cultural activity, the use of public spaces and the relationship between the town and its surrounding landscape.
Harrogate Cure is the Society’s public-facing cultural programme. A new season of activities is being developed for 2027, bringing together art, music, nature, movement and discovery.
The programme aims to celebrate Harrogate’s spa landscape and revive the spirit of experimentation, creativity and international exchange that once helped define the town. The Society describes Harrogate Cure as a contemporary development of the historic idea of the spa as a place of recovery, bringing that concept into modern life.
Spa Commons will explore the restoration and renewed use of Harrogate’s historic spa buildings, mineral springs, gardens and public spaces. The initiative reflects the Society’s interest in how places associated with the town’s spa history might have a renewed role in public life.
Harrogate Wildbelt is a landscape vision intended to connect the town’s rivers, valleys, woodlands and green corridors. Its wider ambition is to consider Harrogate’s natural landscape as a connected network rather than a series of separate places.
The Society says its early priorities include exploring a new public role for Crescent Gardens Pavilion, researching and mapping Harrogate’s mineral springs, developing an archive of the town’s spa history and culture, and continuing its foundational work on the Wildbelt.
These priorities are at an early stage, and the Society has not yet set out a detailed delivery timetable or announced specific restoration projects that have been agreed.
Reconnecting Harrogate with its spa heritage
George Eglese, founder and director of Harrogate Spa Society, said the town’s history offered opportunities to bring together different aspects of its heritage and contemporary life.
George Eglese, Founder and Director of Harrogate Spa Society, said: Harrogate was built on an extraordinary spirit of discovery, invention and experimentation. Its mineral waters gave rise to an entire culture of health, nature, architecture, entertainment and international exchange.
That spirit still has enormous potential. We want to bring these different elements back into conversation, reconnect the places and ideas that made Harrogate distinctive, and open up new possibilities for the town and its people.
The Society believes Harrogate’s historic spa identity has relevance beyond the preservation of individual buildings or historical features. Its work brings together the town’s water heritage, cultural traditions, public spaces and natural environment, with the intention of exploring how these elements could contribute to contemporary life.
Its plans also draw on the experience of other historic spa towns. Through research visits and developing relationships with organisations and specialists in Britain and Europe, the Society hopes to exchange ideas about how spa heritage can be maintained and renewed.
Developing an archive and inviting involvement
Alongside its proposed cultural and landscape initiatives, the Society is developing the Harrogate Spa Archive to build knowledge of the town’s spa history and culture.
Its wider work includes supporting research, building relationships with researchers and specialists, and exploring connections between Harrogate and other places with a historic spa tradition.
The Society is developing relationships with cultural organisations, environmental groups and other spa towns across Britain and Europe. It says these connections are intended to create opportunities for collaboration and the exchange of ideas.
It is now inviting people, organisations and potential partners to become involved as its programme takes shape. Further projects, events and opportunities to participate are expected to be announced over the coming months.
Harrogate Spa Society is a Community Interest Company established in October 2026. As a CIC, it operates within a structure intended to serve a community purpose rather than distribute profits to private shareholders.
More information about the Society and its developing programme is available at harrogatespasociety.org. The organisation can also be contacted by email at info@harrogatespasociety.org.