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The Hold Spa House Conder Token


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The link below provides a great wealth of information on my new Conder Token pickup.

 

It is a RARE Conder Token Wiltshire Holt 11 MS64BN

 

 

Along with providing a link I show an image of the old house now demolished and gone

 

The Holt Spa

 

 

 

Posted on Apr 2, 2011 in Social History, The villages |

The commercial success of spa resorts like Bath and Buxton and on the Continent, like the original Spa in Belgium, inspired the hopeful development of numerous small spas. Taking the waters for health and the associated social scene became all the fashion. Water that was rich in iron salts was found at Holt in 1688 and the supposed benefits of drinking it were promoted widely, with a book being published in London by Henry Eyre in 1731. The water was bottled and sold as far away as London.

 

To accommodate the visitors to the summer season at the spa, the Great House, or Spa House, was built around 1730. It was seven bays wide and three storeys high and made of brick with ashlar dressings.

By the early 19th century the spas brief career was declining and the building became a private school and later was divided up into flats. From 1868 it became a glove factory, but in the middle of the 20th century it was becoming derelict and was demolished in March 1957.

 

 

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A great token which preserves so much history, both architectural & social. The weight of the loaf intrigued me, as it was clear from your picture that there was a 6 lb weight, a 1/2 pound weight plus a much smaller weight. To us, in our affluent times, the weight and cost of a loaf of bread is not that important, but bread was the staff of life back then. In fact industrialization had made it even more important as people were moved from the small farming communities into larger & larger towns & cities and had less recourse to other food supplies. Well I found this, which explains the extra weight, from a 1795 house of commons report re a 1758 Act. The household bread was a brown loaf, less refined than the wheaten, hence the difference in weight for the 2 types of shilling loaves.

1758BreadAct.jpg

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A great token which preserves so much history, both architectural & social. The weight of the loaf intrigued me, as it was clear from your picture that there was a 6 lb weight, a 1/2 pound weight plus a much smaller weight. To us, in our affluent times, the weight and cost of a loaf of bread is not that important, but bread was the staff of life back then. In fact industrialization had made it even more important as people were moved from the small farming communities into larger & larger towns & cities and had less recourse to other food supplies. Well I found this, which explains the extra weight, from a 1795 house of commons report re a 1758 Act. The household bread was a brown loaf, less refined than the wheaten, hence the difference in weight for the 2 types of shilling loaves.

1758BreadAct.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very interesting....thanks for posting this

 

 

 

 

 

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