Spa town Spa town A spa town is a resort town based on a mineral spa (a developed mineral spring). Patrons visit spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. The word "spa" is derived from the name of Spa, a town in Belgium. Thomas Guidott set up a medical practice in the English town of Bath in 1668. He became interested in the curative properties of the hot mineral waters there and in 1676 wrote "A discourse of Bathe, and the hot waters there. Also, Some Enquiries into the Nature of the water". This brought the purported health-giving properties
Gilsland Spa Gilsland Spa Gilsland Spa is the present-day name of a hotel at Gilsland, Cumbria, England. It is named from the sulphurous spring which issues from a cliff below the hotel. The original hotel was called The Shaws, from an Old English word meaning a small woodland, and was built in the 1760s, although the site and its surrounding farmland have been known by this name since at least 1603. Lord William Howard's map of the Barony of Gilsland of this date shows two buildings near the site of the hotel labelled "Two tenements called the Shaws". Very little is known