Five... of London's historic public baths
The places our predecessors got steamy
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This week’s edition is a little splash around London’s historic public baths, including some Victorian Roman ones, some Roman Roman ones, some Victorian Turkish ones…
Mostly chose this as a subject because it’s feeling decidedly autumn-edging-into-winter at time of writing and the idea of wandering through steamy halls and lounging in hot pools in a big, lavishly art deco bathhouse is really capturing my imagination — but this month also happens to be your last chance till next spring to take one of the guided tours on the four Saturdays this month the ancient Roman bathhouse under Lower Thames Street is open to the public (more details below).
Bishopsgate Bathhouse, City of London
Built as part of the boom in Turkish bathhouses around the city — and country — in the 1860s, the Bishopsgate Bathhouse originally looked very different. An excellent 2020 article from The Folly Flaneuse details how the owners (the Neville brothers) redeveloped it in the 1890s:
‘Architect George Harold Elphick (1851-1924), whose office was practically next door to the site, designed a flamboyant structure in a Moorish style, cleverly using only a very small footprint at pavement level, with the baths below ground. Elphick also designed the tiles for the interior; based on a pattern used in the Alhambra Palace, they were manufactured by Craven Dunnill in Shropshire. The new facilities, Nevills Turkish Baths, were opened 125 years ago in February 1895 and were widely admired.’
Although the Grade II listed building’s now a subterranean event space available for private hire, more recently a heritage group’s been clashing with developers Landsec over plans to remodel the New Broad Street area that’d see a building cantilevered above the bathhouse and which would, the Victorian Society argues, impact its presence. More news about the proposed development here.
