The pit, once closed, remained so for some years, and there seemed no prospect of anything but loss accruing from the undertaking. But meanwhile, as time passed on, “Mother Earth” was in labour. The water in the shaft gradually accumulated, eventually reaching the surface, and then overflowed, running down an adjoining ditch, which skirted what is now called “Coal-pit Wood.” This overflow naturally attracted attention. Such things as “Spas” were not unknown. There was one at Lincoln, not far from the present Arboretum, and the Woodhall water being found to be _salt_, as was said, like sea water, several persons tried it for different purposes. A very old man (living, in 1899, at Kirkby-on-Bain) {9a} states that he and several others in that parish used the water as a purgative (a property which it still retains). Others used it as increasing the appetite (one of the effects still remarked). Joseph East, lately resident at Kirkstead, and brother of the man killed in the pit, was sent, as a boy, to get a bottle of it to administer to a sick horse. The Squire, Mr. T. Hotchkin, found it very beneficial for his gout, and the servant, who brought the water for him, mentioned this to a woman at Horsington, named Coo, suffering from rheumatism. By the advice of her doctor, she tried the water, and was completely cured. In October, 1903, died Mrs. Wilson, mother of Robert Wilson, gardener, of Martin Dales, aged 92. She was the oldest patient then living who had baths at Woodhall before the first bath-house was built. There was only a wooden bath, at a charge of 1s. per bath. Many similar {9b} cases are recorded by the older inhabitants, which proved beyond doubt the efficacy of the water in the ailments of man and beast, especially for rheumatism and skin diseases. This led to the re-opening of the mine shaft about the year 1824. In 1829, or 1830, a small protecting structure was erected, a windlass was put up, which was worked by a horse walking round and round, drawing the water from “the well,” as it came now to be termed, and an open brick tank was constructed in which the poor could dip, a veritable modern Siloam. {9c} In 1834 a bath house was erected by the late Thomas Hotchkin, Esq., the then owner of Woodhall, and in the following year the Victoria Hotel was built by him, his whole outlay amounting to some £30,000. Provision was thus made for the reception of visitors, and the treatment of their ailments on a scale more than adequate for the public requirements at the time. Dr. Barton, Dr. Scott, and other medical practitioners successively resided at the Spa, but for some years longer (as will be shewn in the next chapter) the difficulty of access prevented any great influx of patients, such as we have seen in more recent times, and a primitive state of things still prevailed, such as in these days can be hardly realised, and Woodhall Spa was probably for some years little known beyond the neighbourhood, or the county.