Boston Spa

A few of us from the camera club went over to Boston Spa to meet with a friend and former member who lives there. It's a village about 25 miles from Saltaire, on the way to York. The village really came into being in the 1770s, when a sulphur spring was discovered that led to the development of a spa where visitors could 'take the waters'. By the early 1800s it was growing and thriving, which has left a legacy of fine Georgian buildings along the main street. As nearby Harrogate's popularity as a spa grew, Boston Spa's declined but the village remains an attractive and desirable place to visit and to live. 

The parish church of St Mary the Virgin (above) isn't very old as British churches go, built around 1880 on the site of an earlier church completed in 1814. 

Of course it is all much changed, but close attention to the buildings reveals details like arches through to yards at the rear. They were probably designed to allow horses and carriages through to stables at the back.  

Along the high street, I noticed a fine example of an old-fashioned milestone. 

Walking along the high street, I was trying to photograph some of the varied and attractive buildings - Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and some much more recent that have been carefully designed to reference the styles of the older ones. (I'm always in two minds whether this is a good thing or not.)

It was around this point that my camera decided to die! All of a sudden it decided not to focus and completely jammed up, so that I was obliged to continue the rest of our walk using just my phone. (See if you can spot which photos I took with which instrument, over the course of my three posts about the day!) Thankfully, once I got home I was able to sort it out, though for some reason all its settings were wiped so that I had to start over and set it up 'from new'.