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Article Link George Eglese runs Fontis Studio, a design studio working across culture, identity and living environments. He has been involved in developing contemporary approaches to Harrogate’s spa heritage, is the non-councillor lead for natural environment on the Harrogate Town Plan Committee, and has been involved in the 100-acre community land acquisition between Harrogate and Knaresborough. I agree with much of Iain Patton’s ambition. Harrogate should be healthier, greener and easier to move around. But the debate becomes too simple when it turns into cars versus people. The real question is what kind of place Harrogate wants to be. Too many projects risk being treated separately: traffic, planting, signage, cycling, seating and public realm. Without a clear place narrative they become piecemeal. Harrogate needs to distil its deeper sense of self, so future projects grow from the town rather than sitting on top of it like generic improvements. Harrogate is car-centric. Much of its catchment is suburban, rural and used to driving in, parking, shopping and meeting friends. If the centre feels harder to access before it is more attractive to spend time in, many may simply shop online or go elsewhere. That does not mean nothing should change. It means change should be led by place, not punishment. The deeper problem is not simply too many cars. It is that Harrogate does not give people enough reasons to dwell, or a story to connect with as they move through it. The task is to make the centre more beautiful, comfortable, green and distinctive, while giving its streets, gardens and public spaces a clearer sense of self. That sense of self is Harrogate’s real advantage: water, health, gardens, architecture, walking, ecology, sociability and landscape. This is not about treating spa heritage as a museum piece, but asking how Harrogate becomes a living spa town again. Spa towns have always evolved with the needs of their time. Today, wellbeing, nature connection, ecology and quality of place have never been higher on the agenda. Harrogate should think at the scale of Europe’s great spa towns. But to reach that stage, we first need to look beneath our feet. That ambition will not come from banning cars and importing generic street furniture. It will come through identity, quality and care. We should look honestly at the pedestrianised streets we already have. They warn against treating the removal of cars as a magic answer. Before taking cars away elsewhere, surely we should make those spaces work better. Bishopthorpe Road in York shows how a street can be strengthened through independents, cafés, events and a clear sense of itself. Harrogate should learn from that, not copy it. I grew up in Harrogate and work across design, culture, heritage and environment, helping bring its spa heritage to life in contemporary contexts and leading on natural environment for the Town Plan. The opportunity is less about one grand transport gesture and more about careful urban acupuncture: improving the passages, gardens, squares, thresholds and streets that hold the town together. James Street does not need a car ban to become better. Trees, planters, parklets and spill-out spaces could turn a few parking spaces into places to sit. Princess Square could become a small piazza. Library Gardens could work harder with the library, Prince Albert Row and Victoria Avenue. Prospect Terrace, or Pier Head, opposite the Cenotaph, was designed to take in the prospect across Low Harrogate and towards Nidderdale. The pétanque club has acknowledged that its current location, so close to the road, is not ideal. A better setting for the club could allow the terrace to recover its original purpose. The Stray will be 250 years old in 2028. It exists because of Harrogate’s springs and wells, and was protected to safeguard the waters and health-giving landscape that made the town famous. That anniversary is an opportunity to look again at why The Stray exists and allow that to inform its future. For many coming from the south, it could be more than a space to cross. It could become a landscape that connects more deeply with the ecology, heritage and culture that shaped Harrogate when it was first protected. Active travel will work best when born from desire, not punishment. People should walk because the route is beautiful and spend time in town because the spaces are worth it. The future should not be anti-car or pro-car. It should be pro-place. Every new project should help express Harrogate’s identity. That is how a place becomes confident, distinctive and strong.

A radical new vision that puts nature and water at the heart of Harrogate’s development was laid out on Tuesday evening at the latest meeting of the Harrogate Town Plan Forum. The forum is a group of volunteers who have come together to create a comprehensive plan for Harrogate’s development that could potentially be adopted by the new Harrogate Town Council when its first councillors are elected in May. Over the last few months, around 30 people have met regularly at the United Reformed Church on West Park to discuss various aspects of the plan, and last night’s session focused on the environment. Following a brief introduction by forum chair Stuart Holland, George Eglese, creative director at design studio FONTIS, took to the floor to give a presentation setting out his vision for a greener town, reinvigorated by allowing its waters to play a more prominent role in the urban environment. Mr Eglese – who is a coordinator at Harrogate 250, an initiative to “revitalise Harrogate as a 21st-century spa town” – started by explaining the unique geology that gives rise to Harrogate’s diverse springs, and by recounting the main events in the town’s early history, including the Great Award: the setting aside of 200 acres of land we now call the Stray. He said: The Stray was originally moorland, with rocks, heather, gorse, trees and wetland, but these were all ‘tidied up’ throughout the Victorian age. Then in the 1830s, plans were drawn up to drain the area ‘to render it more productive for grazing purposes’. The drive to "improve" the Stray was not without its opponents, such as local hotelier John Greeves, whose arguments, said Mr Eglese, "resonate with current ecological values". In 1834, he said: The removal of these natural features [trees, ponds etc] would be a great loss to the character of Harrogate, leaving nothing but an artificial landscape where once nature thrived. The urge to tame the Stray continued throughout the 20th century, and only recently has the council allowed even wildflowers to grow around the fringes. Mr Eglese envisages a more natural-looking Stray, where the water is not drained, but left to behave as it used to, filling ponds and following ancient watercourses. He has also used Yorkshire Water data and advanced mapping tools to show where water currently settles, for example on parts of the Stray after heavy rain, and where it used to flow – in becks, now culverted, flowing down what are now Cold Bath Road and Montpellier Hill. Another beck, albeit heavily modified, can still be seen flowing through the Valley Gardens before it disappears below street level near the main entrance. Mr Eglese, who also sits on the board of Long Lands Common and is a trustee at Knaresborough Civic Society, told the Stray Ferret that the chance to create a town plan for Harrogate was an opportunity to place nature and the town’s waters at heart of its rebirth as a modern spa town. He said: To me, this is an opportunity to rally the community around an integrated strategy to recognise the value of our spa heritage and its relevance in the 21st century. The opportunity is huge. We have something nowhere else has. I was speaking to Unesco, to ask why Harrogate was not included in its list of Great Spa Towns of Europe. They said Harrogate is unique – other spa towns don’t have the diversity of waters we have – but we don’t use that. The town does not have ‘continuing spa function’, which was a critical criterion when qualifying [for the Unesco list]. We do have the Turkish Baths, yes, but they don’t go far enough or utilise our mineral waters. This was the primary point, so if we could come up with a plan to open up the springs, big tick. Another option might be to mark the courses of the town’s hidden becks so that residents and visitors could see where they run beneath the ground. Mr Eglese added: We have an opportunity to put water back at the heart of the town. Harrogate can be a beacon of health and well-being once again. The next meeting of the Harrogate Town Plan Forum is free to attend and will focus on Health and Well-being. It will be held at the United Reformed church on West Park in Harrogate on Wednesday, March 12.

Article Link Over 30 attendees, including senior officers from North Yorkshire Council’s Regeneration and Parks teams, the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water, and Leeds University, as well as representatives from heritage, environmental, and community groups, including Long Lands Common and the Nidd Action Group, gathered for a landmark workshop titled “Growing the 21st Century Spa Town.” The event was led by George Eglese, an associate of the Institute of Place Management and local business owner, and Sarah Lonsdale, project manager for river enhancement at the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust (YDRT). The workshop took participants on a fascinating journey through Harrogate’s history and the profound influence of its waters, which Eglese described as “a wonder of the world hidden right beneath our feet.” He traced Harrogate’s evolution from its geological beginnings to its rise as a foremost European spa town, once competing amongst the top- ranking spa destinations across the continent. Drawing on this rich heritage, the environmental challenges facing Harrogate, and its rivers was discussed, along with the deteriorating state of Harrogate’s three major tributaries; Crimple, Oak and Bilton Beck. Sarah Lonsdale said: Harrogate’s becks, including the hidden underground river network flowing beneath the town, are integral to its future prosperity. In good condition, they have amazing potential to support local people and wildlife. Yet unfortunately, Yorkshire has lost over 80% of its wetlands, along with all the ecosystem services they provide. Both presenters emphasised how these issues stem from a fundamental disconnect between people and nature, positioning them as a superlative opportunity for Harrogate to reaffirm its position in the 21st century as a beacon of health, nature, and prosperity. Eglese said: Harrogate has the potential to once again attain world-class status by embracing a holistic vision that encompasses its environmental, cultural, and community assets. This isn’t just about environmental amelioration. It’s about reimagining what it means to be a spa town – a town that illustrates its heritage in an immersive and vibrant way, celebrates its natural phenomena, and recognises the value of its essence in the wellbeing renaissance happening today. This is the time for a true renaissance, Harrogate’s renaissance. Following the presentation, participants engaged in dynamic discussions centred around four core themes: Protected Water, Abundant Nature, Vibrant Heritage, and Thriving Community. They explored ideas and proposals that are the early beginnings of some very exciting and innovative cultural and environmental projects for the town. Reflecting on the workshop, Lonsdale said: We were blown away by the enthusiasm and inspiration today. We still have many groups to engage with and urge anyone interested in being involved to get in touch. We are also planning a series of public in-person and online consultations to help shape the programme. All participants have agreed to join a newly formed partnership aimed at bringing the project to life.

Convened by Harrogate-based designer George Eglese, this week’s meeting at Pannal Village Hall saw 50 residents, councillors, landowners and environmental specialists gather to explore the creation of Crimple Common and a continuous greenway through the Crimple Valley. George Eglese, who is also the founder of the Harrogate Cure initiative, a long-term programme exploring Harrogate’s renewal as ‘Britain’s Living Spa’, said: “I have long felt a need for Harrogate to do some pro-active and joined-up thinking around the town and its roots. "Crimple Valley is one of Harrogate’s most important natural corridors, yet much of it remains fragmented and vulnerable. "Crimple Commons is an opportunity to bring parts of the landscape into long-term community stewardship and restore its ecological function, while contributing to a wider Wildbelt around the town.” In 2013, the Nidderdale Greenway opened as a walking and cycling path between Harrogate and Ripley, with the route later extended to the village of Clint. The ambitious new initiative seeks to create another transformative greenway in Harrogate. Early ideas for Crimple Commons also include the creation of a new community common on land west of Leeds Road, alongside habitat restoration such as wetlands, species-rich meadow and woodland, reflecting the valley’s historic role as floodplain and wet woodland. A further ambition is the creation of a Crimple Greenway linking Pannal and Harrogate along the former railway corridor and viaduct, improving access while restoring ecological continuity through the valley. George Eglese, who is also the founder of Fontis, a Harrogate-based practice working across culture, identity and living environments, said: “Crimple Commons forms part of a wider vision I have been working on known as the Harrogate Wildbelt. "This is a long-term initiative to establish a continuous network of restored natural landscapes around Harrogate, connecting key ‘bioregions’ around the town such as Nidd Gorge, Oakdale, Crimple Valley.” The meeting in Pannal marked the first step in a longer process of engagement and partnership-building, with further open sessions planned and discussions continuing with landowners and local organisations.

Exploring how design once held a nation together - and how it might again. Lately I’ve been sketching, tinkering - having a play with the idea of what a British Rail 2.0 might look like. It comes, perhaps inevitably, at a time when the government is proposing to resurrect British Rail - this time under the valiant title Great British Railways. I’ll reserve judgement on the name, though if the early visuals are anything to go by… well, let’s hope they’re still in draft form. Humour aside, the thought lingers: for all its flaws, British Rail represented one of the most coherent national design systems ever attempted. Beneath the bureaucracy and the beige sandwiches was a quietly brilliant infrastructure of design - a language that united a nation in motion. I’ve come to believe that’s what most people are nostalgic for - not the timetables or the tea, but the design. That considered, beautifully rational visual order that made travel feel part of something larger and shared. This project isn’t nostalgia; it’s curiosity. A small homage to the idea that design itself can be infrastructure - something that connects us, dignifies us, and holds the everyday together. Standing at the Edge of Order In the National Railway Museum, Mallard and Flying Scotsman sit like totems of another era - monuments to confidence and craft. They remind us that progress once had a look, a sound, a typeface. The journey home told a different story: migraine lighting and tannoy fatigue. A system moving, but with no soul. A machine that works (ish), but meaning, utterly vanished. Somewhere along the line, we lost the poetry of travel. So British Rail 2.0 became a way of asking: what would coherence feel like now? Why It Matters Rail isn’t just transport. It’s civic rhythm. It carries our families, our goods, our stories — from Cornwall to Caithness, from city concourse to coastal halt. When it works, it binds us through shared experience. When it fragments, the nation feels smaller, meaner, less sure of itself. Design has always been the invisible syntax of belonging. Get it right, and even a platform sign can feel like home. From Utility to Culture If British Rail once gave shape to how the nation moved, it also shaped how we felt about movement itself. There was a quiet dignity in its order - a sense that the network was held together by care as much as steel. British Rail 2.0 plays with that idea — imagining what a railway might look like if coherence, beauty and belonging were once again considered essential. A language that still knows how to speak, if only someone would let it. It becomes, in a sense, the soul of movement - a living thread running through sound, ritual and material. The departure chime drawn from landscape; the warmth of light as the train glides from the platform; the tactility of oak, wool, and brass restoring calm to the senses. Travel as ceremony, not transaction. Onboard, culture unfolds quietly - journals in seat-backs, regional food served with grace, music and language curated with the same care as engineering. Each touchpoint part of a larger continuity, a railway fluent in both precision and feeling. And perhaps, in rediscovering that kind of care, we might rediscover something of ourselves - a sense of pride not shouted, but quietly lived; the fleeting but profound relief of things making sense. Because when a nation designs with conviction, even a timetable can feel like poetry. And when it doesn’t… well, you end up with Great British Railways.

The name Fontis  comes from the Latin for “spring.” Not in the sense of a season, but of water rising from the ground - a source that carries life, clarity and momentum. For us, that word is more than a label. It is a metaphor for how we see design. A spring is both quiet and powerful: it emerges from depth, shaped by unseen forces and it creates ripples that flow far beyond its origin. In the same way, our work begins with listening and discovery - paying attention to what lies beneath the surface of culture, place, or identity. We search for the essence that gives a project its life, its energy, its reason to flow. From there, we shape forms, systems and stories that can travel outward with strength and coherence. Fontis  reminds us that ideas need both grounding and movement. They need to be rooted in context, history, and meaning - but also designed to flow, adapt and connect. As a studio, we hold onto this image: every project as a spring, carrying its own source of vitality, ready to find its course.

We live in a world of fragments. Digital feeds, sprawling cities, political divides, even our own attention - all seem to pull apart rather than hold together. Yet beneath the noise, there is a human longing for coherence: for the sense that things fit, that life is not random but woven. Coherence is often mistaken for conformity. But true coherence is not sameness; it is harmony. It is the way a river bends through a valley, the way the stones of a cathedral fit together, the way a piece of music allows different notes to resolve into a whole. Coherence dignifies difference by giving it a place in a larger pattern. The philosopher Roger Scruton described beauty as “a call to homecoming.” Beauty, for him, was not ornament but alignment - the moment when things stand in proportion and feel at ease. When we encounter coherence, we often call it beautiful because it resonates with an ancient intuition: that the world has an order, and that we belong within it. Modern life has largely abandoned coherence. Our cities are shaped by expedience rather than proportion. Our institutions are managed by spreadsheets rather than meaning. Our public spaces, digital and physical alike, are littered with signals that do not add up to a story. In such an environment, alienation becomes the norm. As Alasdair MacIntyre observed, without shared narratives or virtues, societies collapse into “a heap of broken images.” To recover coherence is therefore a civic task, not merely an aesthetic one. Wendell Berry, writing of farms and communities, noted that “a good solution solves more than one problem, and it does not create new ones.” This is coherence in practice: a pattern of life in which parts strengthen each other rather than compete. A coherent farm enriches soil, nourishes families and sustains culture. A coherent town cares for its past while welcoming its future. Coherence in this sense is not a style but a way of living. It is the patient work of fitting things together so that they strengthen one another - people with place, memory with possibility, beauty with belonging. It is the opposite of fragmentation. It restores dignity by allowing us to know where we are, who we are among, and what we are part of. The beauty of coherence is that it does not demand perfection. It asks only for proportion, rhythm, and care. In an age of disconnection, to work for coherence is not nostalgia, but a radical act of repair. It is to insist that life can once again be woven, and that beauty and meaning belong not at the margins, but at the very centre of our common world.

If springs remind us of beginnings, flow reminds us of movement. Life itself is carried by flow - rivers through valleys, blood through veins, breath through lungs, ideas through communities. What endures is rarely static; it is patterned movement, shaped by the channels that allow it to travel and renew. Architect Christopher Alexander, in his Pattern Language, argued that healthy environments emerge from the rhythms of life itself: paths worn by walking, courtyards formed by gathering, rooms that breathe with natural light. His insight was that architecture should not impose order, but give form to flows that already exist. This is what we mean by the architecture of flow: the structures, visible and invisible, that guide movement without constraining it. A good system does not force, it enables. It carries energy where it is needed, and prevents it from being lost. The philosopher Henri Bergson called life itself élan vital - a vital impetus, an energy always in motion. Our role is not to create the energy, but to foster the passages through which it can unfold. In natural systems, flow is always relational. A river does not exist without banks; wind without terrain; a story without a listener. Anthropologist Tim Ingold describes lines and threads as the most basic units of life - paths walked, stories told, gestures repeated. These threads weave into tapestries of meaning. Flow, in this sense, is never abstract: it is always entangled with land, memory and community. Design becomes architectural when it respects these entanglements. To design for flow is to observe how people already move and gather, to notice the subtle currents of attention and trust, to build frameworks that strengthen rather than sever them. Flow is convivial when it empowers participation; it becomes oppressive when it channels everything into one dominant stream. Today, many of our flows are broken. Traffic systems fragment neighbourhoods, digital platforms capture attention only to scatter it, economic currents siphon wealth away from the places that generate it. These are architectures of extraction, not of life. To repair them, we must ask: what would it mean to design systems that circulate value, knowledge and beauty back into the communities that sustain them? The architecture of flow is not about efficiency but about resonance. It means crafting environments - physical, cultural, digital - where the streams of life are legible, shared and nourishing. It is the difference between a culverted stream hidden beneath asphalt and a riverwalk that becomes a town’s gathering place. Between an algorithm that fragments attention and a ritual that gathers it. Between a system that depletes and one that renews. Flow, when well-shaped, leads to confluence. Tributaries meet, differences combine and something larger is born. This is the promise of the architecture of flow: not control, but coherence - a way of guiding energies so that they sustain rather than scatter. In an age of fractures, the task is clear. We must become architects of flow - designing the channels through which life, culture and meaning can once again move with rhythm and grace.