The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Tenbury Wells Spa
Preserving a glory that never was. The faded charm of the pump rooms at Tenbury Wells, its corrugated iron shell a far cry from the grandeur of rival spa towns Cheltenham and Bath.
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Overview
The waters of Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire were promoted for their health benefits from the 1840s following the discovery of brine water by local land-owner Septimus Godson. A combination of poor transport links and competition from the more fashionable resorts meant that the pump rooms at Tenbury Wells fell into disuse. By 1978, when visited by Peter Green for ATV Today, the rusty corrugated iron shell looked on the brink of collapse as former mayor Eric Lowe explains.
Despite the bleak picture painted in 1978 the pump rooms at Tenbury Wells had a reprieve and were eventually bought by Leominster District Council with a full restoration following in the late 1990s.
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