Mark Hunnebell who cares for White Wells in Ilkley, ready for visitors to take part in the New Years Day tradition of jumping in the plunge pool
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00:00 Okay, so I'm Mark Honeywell, I live at Whitewells on Ilkley Moor.
00:04 It's a fair blustery period most of the time and if you look without your hat,
00:08 and Ilkley Moor backtaps the place to be on New Year's Day.
00:12 The tradition's been going on since 1995, so it's a relatively recent tradition,
00:17 it's not an old one at all, but it's grown in popularity since the 90s,
00:21 over the last three decades or so, and now we're looking forward to getting
00:25 quite a number of people coming here on New Year's Day.
00:28 Anything up to about 300, which was around about the numbers that we got last year.
00:32 It's a great way of saying the New Year, and a very novel one as well,
00:36 a very unusual way to do that. You come along here, you bring your swimming stuff
00:41 and you jump into the cold water bath behind me, which is round about 8 degrees
00:46 on average temperature, throughout the year. But if it's a cold day,
00:50 it'll be a little bit cooler than that on New Year's Day.
00:53 I go in it every day, New Year's Day or any other day, and it's very invigorating
00:58 and very refreshing. You go in, come out, go back in again and come out.
01:02 Don't stay in for very long, just do a quick dip, but you feel buzzing when you come out.
01:07 It really is a good feeling when you go in and come out of there.
01:11 Your body feels tingly all over and you're ready to go for the rest of the day,
01:16 and the rest of the year if you're going on New Year's Day.
01:19 The building itself dates back to around about 1700, at which time there was a bath
01:23 at the top of the hill behind the present buildings, and that was done away with in 1791
01:30 when the two baths that we've got on the site here were built in Byrogwood Dale.
01:36 It was instrumental in establishing Hillfield as a smart town, and throughout the 19th century
01:41 it could have been quite famous for people coming along and taking the waters from the town,
01:45 and big hydros were built where you could come along and do that.
01:49 But into the 20th century the popularity of that waned, and Whitewells became something of a curiosity.
01:56 Around about 50 years ago, by the 1970s, unfortunately Whitewells was on the cusp of dereliction
02:02 and was going to be demolished. But fortunately it was saved by Eric Busby, a local businessman,
02:08 in conjunction with the town council, put some of his own money into it, renovated the place,
02:13 and made it more or less as it is at the present time.
02:16 We've got Gas and Electric, that came in in 1994, so we've had that here now for about 30 years or so.
02:23 Prior to that it was all on the old Calagas.