Bedfordshire
Mineral Waters

Places > Bedfordshire > Geography and Geology

Several springs are known to be impregnated with various minerals, but none of them have acquired much celebrity. The ingenious Dr.Yeats, physician to the Infirmary at Bedford, who has bestowed considerable attention to this subject, has favoured us with a list of the places where mineral springs have been pointed out to him, and the result of his analysis of a few of them. The springs enumerated are at Barton; Bedford (near the Friars); Cupwell at Bletsoe (near the Falcon); Poplar well at Blunham (near Barford bridge); Bromham (near Webb's Lane); Bushmead; Clapham; Cranfield; Hulcot; Milton-Ernest; two at Odell; Chadwell at Pertenhall; a well called Ochres at Risley; Silsoe (at a farm called New Inn); Turvey (in Dovehouse Close); and the spring which supplies the cold bath in Wrest-gardens. Dr. Yeats has analysed the water from Clapham, Wrest-gardens, Bromham, Oakley, and Turvey. "The two first evidently contain iron. In the Wrest-garden water, iron appears to be held in solution by the carbonic acid; in the Clapham water, by the vitriolic acid forming the ferrum vitriolatum. They both of them contain also the sulphat and muriat of lime, as likewise the sulphat of magnesia, or Epsom salts. The Bromham water contains no iron, but holds in solution the different salts just mentioned; the muriat of lime being in considerable quantity." The spring at Oakley contains the same salts in small quantities, except that it is not ferruginous: it is remarkably clear and transparent. The spring at Turvey contains "a very large proportion of lime, held in solution by a superabundance of carbonic acid." Of the waters which have not been analysed, one of the springs at Odell is known to be mildly cathartic; and Chadwell at Pertenhall, somewhat ferruginous.

Extract from: Lysons' Magna Britannia being a concise topographical account of several counties of Great Britain by the Rev. Daniel Lysons, A.M., F.R.S. F.A. and L.S. Rector of Rodmarton in Gloucestershire and Samuel Lysons, Esq., F.R.S. and F.A.S. Keeper of His Majesty's Records in the Tower of London, 1806

Page last updated: 22nd January 2014