Harrogate’s population in 1841 was about 4,000 of which 3,372 lived in Bilton with High Harrogate and about 700 lived in the Low Harrogate part of Pannal. Twenty one “improvement commissioners” were elected to implement the provisions of the 1841 Act and their first task was to assure the future of the community by protecting and enhancing the Old Sulphur Well, that source of “the harvest that never fails”, and the “life’s blood of the town”. A competition was announced whose winner was Isaac Thomas Shutt who designed a handsome stone structure in the form of a regular octagon, raised high over the most important sulphur wells, and crowned with a well proportioned dome.
The old stone temple of 1808 was dismantled and carted up to High Harrogate, where it was re-erected over the Tewit Well and walled in, to provide protection from the wind to which that exposed site was prone.
At the same time, the St John’s Pump Room, which had been erected in 1786 by Alexander Wedderburn, was rebuilt by I. T. Shutt, who designed an austere octagonal pump room of finely dressed ashlar, whose domed roof was partly hidden by a decorative parapet.
The opening of the new Royal Pump Room on 21 July 1842 provided Harrogate with its first public building which could compete with the private sector’s developments at the Promenade Room, Victoria and Montpellier Baths, and Royal Spa Rooms.