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,^[1] 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 about the first hotel but one contemporary drawing suggests that it may have had a tower in imitation of the type of fortified house known locally as a peel.

This original Shaws Hotel burned down spectacularly in 1859, and was replaced on a grander scale soon afterwards by G. G. Mounsey, a local landowner and first elected mayor of Carlisle. Around this time, Rose Hill railway station was renamed Gilsland, and the surrounding collection of hamlets became the village of Gilsland, but the hotel continued to be called The Shaws until it was leased to the Gilsland Spa Hotel and Hydro Company of South Shields in 1893. Expensive renovations, including an improved water supply, crippled this company financially, and it failed in 1900. The Co-operative Wholesale Society took over in 1901 to run it as a convalescent home, the Co-operative Group being principal shareholders in the business.^[2]

The hotel has been a popular resort since the eighteenth century. Susanna Blamire, the Cumbrian Muse, came to take the waters in the later part of the century and Walter Scott came here in "the season" of 1797 looking for a wife, and found one. The opening of the railway station in 1836 galvanised the village and during the later part of the 19th century and the early 20th, Gilsland was thronged with tourists, many of whom were working-class people from Tyneside. Reviewers of the hotel repeatedly stressed the free and easy way in which the different classes mixed. One of the main attractions, though for reasons no-one is prepared to admit, has been the Popping Stone, an enigmatic stone some half a mile from the hotel in a secluded glade, linked to various courtship and fertility rituals. Next to the stone was the Kissing Bush, an ancient hawthorn which died in the 1940s. These relics and two mineral springs (sulphurous and chalybeate) are situated along the network of wide footpaths known as the Home Walks which provide access to the rugged scenery of the hotel grounds. During its time the hotel has been a First World War military convalescent home and a Second World War maternity hospital and was known locally until recently as "The Home".

In December 2017 the Cooperative Society sold Gilsland Spa, together with its sister hotel, The Esplanade in Scarborough.  The hotels were bought by the Northern Powerhouse Developments group, who planned major refurbishments.^[3][4][5] However, companies within the Northern Powerhouse Developments group collapsed into bankruptcy in 2019^[6] and Gilsland Spa, alongside the other hotels owned by the company, were put up for sale by the administrator in July of that year.  The hotel was valued at £1.55m and marketed by Christie & Co.^[7][8] Following the collapse of the Northern Powerhouse Developments group the Gilsland Spa property was acquired by Stratsmore Holdings, in the summer of 2021.^[9]

The Northern Powerhouse Developments group is currently subject of a major fraud investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.  The investigation into suspected fraud and money laundering focused on investments offered in care homes and hotels, including Gilsland Spa, between 2013 and 2019.^[10][11]

On the 26 July 2025 a group of Urban Explorers were attacked and held captive while they were visiting Gilsland Spa. One of the attackers was subsequently convicted of offences in relation to the attack.^[12]

Gilsland Spa closed for renovations at the end of October 2021^[13] and remains empty and disused to this day^[14]. Evoke Design & Build Ltd appear to have been commissioned to undertake restoration work to some adjoining cottages^[15] although there is no sign that the property is to re-open as a hotel imminently.

• Lamb, J. n.d. c2001. Gilsland Spa - A Co-operative Centenary History; Co-operative Society

• Official site

55°00′09″N 2°34′15″W / 55.0024°N 2.5707°W / 55.0024; -2.5707