The Rakes of Mallow

Ye nymphs deprest With want of rest, And with complexion sallow, 
Don't waste your prime With chalk or lime, But Drink the springs at Mallow.

All you that are Both thin and bare, With scarce an ounce of tallow, 
To make your flesh Both plump and fresh, Come, Drink at springs at Mallow.



Not many people know that Mallow was once a thriving Spa town (actually probably not many people know about Mallow full stop) but if you look closely, as we did, there are clues all around you. The little pump house survives and is delightful, mock Tudor but inside empty and forlorn. Built in 1828, at a time when the spa town was already on the decline (it replaced another building which is described as a sort of shell grotto) it had a pump-room, an apartment for medical consultation, a reading room and baths. If you peer in the windows (of course I did) you can still see the railings that lead down to a spa well.The original well was once a holy well and remains in the grounds, scummy and neglected but with the bubbles still rising from the spring. The waters are warm, 15C in the summer, and Brigadier Jephson recommended:  'a very little of it as uncommonly good with a lot of whiskey'.  The waters were peculiarly efficacious in scrofulous and consumptive cases.  


Across the road is magnificent water trough with lions' head spouts, circa 1810, now much neglected but nicknamed The Dogs’ Heads. Sadly the water is now unfit for human consumption but the Guinness sign above suggests alternative beverages.


Having been a very chic watering hole it attracted the wrong types and the rakes flooded into town causing havoc. This drinking song was written in 1740 by one of those very rakes, 'pleasant Ned Lysaght':


Beauing, belleing, dancing, drinking,
Breaking windows, cursing, sinking
Ever raking, never thinking,
Live the Rakes of Mallow;
Spending faster than it comes,
Beating waiters bailiffs, duns,
Bacchus' true begotten sons,
Live the Rakes of Mallow...
 
 
... Racking tenants, stewards teasing,
Swiftly spending, slowly raising,
Wishing to spend all their days in
Raking as at Mallow.
Then to end this raking life,
They get sober, take a wife,
Ever after live in strife,
And wish again for Mallow.


The Rakes of Mallow  get your dancing shoes on!