Supposedly, she left three letters: one to Fisher, one to her husband, and one to her brother-in-law. The brother-in-law said his letter explained she was going to York to stay at a spa. 1926 was a rough year for Agatha. Her beloved mother passed away in April, she spent the summer clearing out her childhood home, and her husband, Archie, asked for a divorce in August. No wonder she might need a spa retreat!

Unlike Agatha, we weren’t under any stress, so we just enjoyed wandering around the hotel and pretending it was 1926.

Harrogate’s mineral and sulphur wells have attracted the health-conscious since the late 1500s. People came to drink and bathe in the waters and, naturally, they needed places to stay and things to do while there. In the next century, lodgings, shops, and twenty communal bathing houses were built to provide water-related health services. By the mid-1800s, even the old wells had fancy edifices built around them. You can still visit the Royal Pump Room which is now an historical museum.

The original Swan Inn dates from around the 1700s, but was significantly rebuilt during Harrogate’s Victorian heyday. The Harrogate Hydropathic Company purchased the inn from Isaac Thomas Shutt, who also happens to have designed the Royal Pump Room.

At the Harrogate Hydropathic patients were treated through special diets, massage, and therapeutic baths in addition to sulphur water drinking. They also enjoyed 200 bedrooms with hot and cold running water as well as coal fires, an expansive dining room, and well-appointed public rooms.

We did not have any spa treatments while at the Old Swan. In fact, there aren’t any to be had. But you can book a wedding reception or business meeting there. It’s a very elegant looking building, from the moment you walk in to register in the lobby. We very much enjoyed being a guest there, as you can see from our photo exploration:

Here's Don waiting in the lobby to check in. There were no bellhops in little caps like in the 1920s, but it felt like they might show up any minute!

We peeked into a number of the rooms. These two are the Garden Room, which must look lovely with the fairy lights lit up, and the Red Lounge, although it seems to be mostly yellow.  It has a fabulous fireplace!

This is the classy Swan Lounge with a bar in the back. Can’t you just imagine Miss Marple dozing in one of those high-backed chairs and overhearing a suspicious conversation? During the Hydropathic days, incidentally, no alcohol was served in the hotel because it wasn’t healthy. Liquor returned to the menu after WWII when the Hydro became the Old Swan.

Another view of the lounge. I would have loved to sit in all the chairs and contemplate all the art, but we were on a tight schedule.

These two rooms are called the Library Lounge, although I doubt either is used as such. I left an Agatha Annotated on a library shelf. I wonder if anyone found it!

Here’s Don having breakfast like a proper gent in the Wedgewood Restaurant. We were up early to continue our trip, so it was very quiet in the gorgeous dining room.

We took a few more photos before we left, including one of this iron swan. We wondered why the swan was chained, but didn’t learn the reason until we got home.

It turns out that this is called a Bohun Swan, named for the de Bohun family who used a chained swan as a heraldic symbol. This image is probably derived from old fairy tales about a knight who travels in a coach pulled by swans. The opera Lohengrin is inspired by the same legends. The symbol has been used by other families, too, and is part of the Buckinghamshire Flag.