A committee was established in 1818, which resolved to open a special new subscription for the building of baths for the exclusive use of the poor. The project received valuable support when the Earl of Harewood accepted chairmanship of the charity, eventually donating land on which the hospital could be erected. The site next to the wells, in what later became the Valley Gardens, was a fine one, and when the new Bath Hospital opened for patients in April 1826, it boasted a subscription list headed by the King.
The rules excluded any person who lived within three miles of the wells from using the hospital and inmates were “not to loiter about the Wells, nor the public parks frequented by the visitors…nor to beg on any account; nor under any pretence to frequent a public house.”
The charity thrived, eventually becoming the Royal Bath Hospital, one of the nation’s most important centres for scientifically applied hydrotherapy and the treatment of rheumatism.