5.2% VOL
1 pint = 3 units of alcohol
Spicy brown ale to warm you up - Just what the doctor ordered.
In 1830, Malvern offered the tired, the ill and the unfit many restorative benefits of a minor spa, ie. springwater, clean air and a peaceful natural environment. During the 1830's, spa baths were built at Great Malvern and the town quickly became more popular than Malvern Wells for water-treatment.
In 1842, Dr James Manby Gully arrived at Great Malvern as a pioneer of alternative medicine. He believed in hydropathy and acquired two centres in the town to administer his watercure treatment: Holyrood House for women and Tudor House for men. The treatments involved mainly cold douching and wet-sheeting, interspersed with vigorous walks on the Malvern Hills. The infamous lamp-bath required the patient to sit wrapped in water-soaked blankets above a small stove; sweating profusely was considered most beneficial.
By 1861 a railway line ran through the town and Malvern was attracting numerous hydropaths and hundreds of regular customers. Gully remained the most fashionable doctor in town, but the next generation of alternative medicine was already appearing, eg. electropathy, faradisation, ergotherapy and compressed air baths.
By 1900, hydropathy had virtually died out, being seen as little more than quack-medicine. The hydropaths had merely revived, refined and made popular the basic medieval, curative practises of the monks at Malvern Priory. Just like Dr Gully, they believed that sensible lifestyle with attention to diet and refrain from tobacco was all part of the cure.