Articles with the tag: Bath Street


E Francis & Sons, Bath Street

E Francis & Sons, Bath Street

Until about 1790 Bath Street was the site of an orchard with a few cottages and outbuildings. William Abbotts discovered Leamington’s second spring on the land adjoining the former Bath Hotel, where he built the first hot and cold baths, demolished in 1867 by...
Mrs Margaret Mary Maitland Fowler, O.B.E.

Mrs Margaret Mary Maitland Fowler, O.B.E.

Mrs Fowler, legendary owner of Leamington’s pre-war Blue Café, was born in Derbyshire and grew up in Polesworth, where her father was Vicar of the Parish Church, and Rural Dean.  In 1906, at the age of 25, she married George Herbert Fowler, an Oxford-educated mining...
The Blue Café

The Blue Café

Mrs Margaret Mary Maitland Fowler, sometime owner of Leamington’s famous Blue Café in Bath Street, became something of a Midlands legend in her own lifetime. She was appointed OBE for her services to charity, to disabled ex-servicemen and the Red Cross. Mrs Fowler...
Samuel Thomas Wackrill 1828 – 1907, First Mayor of Leamington

Samuel Thomas Wackrill 1828 – 1907, First Mayor of Leamington

Samuel Wackrill, the son of a prosperous draper from Chelmsford, and an experienced draper in his own right, arrived in Leamington in 1861 and set up a drapery business with his brother Jack.  In common with other tradesmen of the time, the brothers worked very long...