The story of the Spa at Dorton and its subsequent disappearance into the realms of the forgotten or the unknown is perhaps one of the saddest in spa history.

The Chalybeate spa which open in 1833, was the brainchild of Charles Ricketts, he had become the owner of the Dorton Estate upon his marriage into the Aubrey family. The existence of the spring had been known since the late medieval period; it was Ricketts who had the water analysed, improved the access and employed James Hakewill, architect to design the pump room.

Dorton Spa was never going to compete with the likes of Cheltenham or Leamington, being situated in a wood in the rural vale of Aylesbury, and plans were scaled back, the pump room and lodge/ refreshment room being the only buildings, both now gone. However, a boating lake was created, and some planting installed, including an avenue to the entrance of the grounds.

To read the BGT report click here.

This talk will be hosted online using Zoom.

Click here to join the talk at 6:30pm on the 16th of November. 

Meeting ID: 824 8412 9563

Passcode: 676163

Claire de Carle MA is a garden historian, with a keen interest in horticulture, art and social history.

Claire is the chair and a trustee of Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2022. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Trust’s Research & Recording project in 2013 which has produced reports on around 100 locally important historic gardens.

She enjoys researching and writing about little known historic landscape gardens and more recently she has set up two other projects: Artists and their Gardens and Public Parks in Buckinghamshire. She lectures to local groups about Buckinghamshire gardens and Maud Grieve, the herbalist who was the subject of her MA dissertation.

Claire lives in Oakley, a small village on the Bucks/Oxon border. In her spare time she works on the garden that she and her husband have created over the last seven years.