Holt Forest was laid down when Edward I was on the throne and extended between Mannington, Horton, Uddens and Holt.

Like a lot of villages Hold has its own character an famous people and Benjamin Bower lived here and was said to have weighed 34 stone (476lbs) but he was a lively an active person who died in 1763 while drinking a gallon of cider to ward off a fit of gout!

Cottage in Holt Photo courtesy of Jean Harding, Poole

HOLT SPA
(Kindly contributed by Jim McNeil, Bristol)

And taken from:The Mineral Water Trade in the 18th Century, Sylvia McIntyre, Journal of Transport History, Vol II, No 1, Feb, 1973.


The 18th Century Holt Water business benefited from its position by the highway between Bath and Bristol and often accompanied and was distributed with waters from these nearby cities. The bottling of these waters was greatly assisted by the establishment of glass bottle-making Glasshouses in Bristol along the River Avon which took advantage of the river's improved navigability between Bristol & Bath. These Bristol Glasshouses were: The Soap Boilers Glasshouse, Cheese Lane, St Philip¹s, est. 1715; The Hoopers Glassworks, Avon Street (formally Cheese Lane), St Philips, est. 1720, The Crews Hole Glasshouse, St George, est. c1740.

Holt Water was certainly on sale in Fenchurch Street, London by 1727. It was being sold by Henry Eyre who went on to establish an important Mineral Water distribution business. Eyre hyped, through advertising, the reputation of Holt Water and he used his connection with a Bath and Salisbury stage wagon to distribute Holt Water across the South West and to London:

"And as I am at the great Expense of keeping two Teams of Horses, purposely to bring HOLT, BATH and BRISTOL WATERS fresh each week, I doubt not to find sufficient Encouragement, and that the Publick will distinguish between WATERS brought up by Sea (which sometimes are Months before they arrive, and many Months before they are Sold) and WATERS brought up by Land Carriage, especially as the Prices are the same."

The waters from Bath, Bristol and Holt became, if one is to believe the advertisements of the mid-18th century, the most popular English mineral waters in the country.

The eventual decline in the sale and distribution of English Spa waters was due to a number of factors. These included; competition from abroad (especially from Spa itself, Pyrmont and Seltzer), the growing fashion for sea bathing at the expense of visits to Spas and, advances around the production of artificial waters which added minerals and trace elements in a factory and thus avoided the costly problems of transport and bottling on site. By 1827 the London directory was listing but three mineral water warehouses as against ten such premises for the holding and distribution of soda waters, including the warehouse of J. Schweppes & Co.