The Sandrock Chalybeate Spring near Niton, Regency Health Spa View, 1828

An antique engraved view of the Sandrock chalybeate spring near Niton, Isle of Wight, drawn and engraved by George Brannon and published at Wotton on the second of June 1828. The plate looks along the broken cliff and landslip where the iron bearing water rises, with the little spring house standing among fallen blocks of sandstone, a path picked out through the rubble and figures climbing toward it. A chalybeate spring is a mineral spring charged with iron salts, taken by drinking, and this one drew health visitors to the Undercliff in the Regency years when taking the waters was still a medical prescription. Brannon engraves the broken geology with real care, every fallen mass given its own facets and shadow in close uncolored line.

Vectis Scenery was George Brannon's life's work, a series of Isle of Wight views drawn and engraved by him and published from Wotton Common on the island, this volume in 1829. The title promised the picturesque beauties, local peculiarities and places of particular interest of the island, and the book served visitors as both a guide and a keepsake. Brannon's own advertisement leaf sets the first series at twenty-eight views and a map. Each plate is a line engraving on copper, taken from a drawing made in front of the subject. The views were issued uncolored, as line engravings on white paper, and this impression is uncolored.

Spa and medicinal spring subjects form a small, distinct field of collecting, and the Sandrock spring is the Isle of Wight's single contribution to it. The water was exploited commercially in the early nineteenth century, bottled and sold, and the modest building shown here was put up to protect the source, a structure recorded in almost no other image. The combination of a named mineral spring and a dramatic landslip makes this one of the more interesting plates in the volume for anyone who likes the history of health and tourism. It suits a consulting room, a bathroom or a group of geological views.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. Scattered foxing in the margin. All four corners complete. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the bottom.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.