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– those unreliable early spellings again – stopped with his cattle at a spring on Epsom Common, but found that the animals would not drink. The water was loaded with magnesium sulphate. Wickes and the cows had chanced upon Epsom Salts. 54 Soon, Epsom was famed as a spa town, and visitors were swarming in to take the waters, experiencing the natural distaste that Wickes’s cows had shown but suppressing it in the name of health. Samuel Pepys managed to force down four pints of the stuff when he stayed in 1667. He had returned to Epsom despite having found the society there rather vulgar four years earlier, and enjoyed himself a lot more this time: there was ‘much company’, and next door to his lodgings at the King’s Head a party including Nell Gwynn – soon to be Charles II’s mistress – kept a ‘merry house’.
    The patronage of the smart set was fickle. In the early eighteenth century, a man called Livingstone damaged the town’s reputation by setting up his own well as a rival to the original,which he managed to close; visitors decided that Livingstone’s water was less invigorating, and they began to stay away. There was hope of a revival of fortunes when Mrs Mapp, also known as Crazy Sally but nevertheless in strong demand for her marvellous powers as a bone-setter, lodged in the town. But Epsom’s worthies could not persuade her against moving to London, and when, in the 1750s, Dr Richard Russell promoted the benefits of bathing in the sea, he put an end to the career of Epsom as a resort, inspiring health-conscious pleasure-seekers to head for Brighton instead. Epsom Salts endure of course, even though ingesting them has unsurprisingly gone out of fashion, and even though the name no longer indicates provenance. The Epsom Salt Council, an American organization, recommends dissolving the crystals in your bath, with advertised benefits including an improvement in heart and circulatory health, and a flushing away of toxins.
    While visitors were arriving in large numbers, Epsom needed to provide more than salty water to keep them amused. It staged athletics competitions, in which the grand folk watched their footmen race. There were concerts and balls, hunting and gambling; and there was horseracing. The first mention of the sport in the local archives is a sad one: the burial notices for 1625 include the name of William Stanley, ‘who in running the race fell from the horse and brake his neck’. The next record helps to explain why Oliver Cromwell banned horseracing: in 1648, during the English Civil War, a group of Royalists met on the Downs ‘under the pretence of a horse race … intending to cause a diversion on the King’s behalf’. The sport got going again immediately after the Restoration, and Charles came, with mistresses, before transferring his sporting activities to Newmarket. A poet called Baskerville recalled a visit by Charles, in lines worthy of the master of bathos William McGonagall:
    Next, for the glory of the place,
    Here has been rode many a race –
    King Charles the Second I saw here;
    But I’ve forgotten in what year.
    By the early eighteenth century there were regular spring and autumn race meetings at Epsom. Another piece of doggerel portrays the scene:
    On Epsom Downs, when racing does begin,
    Large companies from every part come in.
    Tag-rag and Bob-tail, Lords and Ladies meet,
    And Squires without Estates, each other greet.
    Bets upon bets; this man says, ‘Ten to one.’
    Another pointing cries, ‘Good sir, tis done.’
    Less polite in tone was this reflection on Epsom and its neighbouring towns:
    Sutton for mutton, Carshalton for beeves [cattle],
    Epsom for whores, Ewell for thieves.
    A rather better writer, Daniel Defoe, also observed the scene: ‘When on the public race days they [the Downs] are covered with coaches and ladies, and an innumerable company of horsemen, as well gentlemen