Great Lengths: The Historic Indoor Swimming Pools of Britain
by Dr Ian Gordon and Simon Inglis
English Heritage, £19.99
SWIMMING pools have always had the whiff of elitism about them, what with the new millionaire usually choosing to immediately build a tasteful pool in the shape of a guitar or a dollar bill. Some even build two pools; in case one is broken. But there is another history – that of the people’s pools – and this book is dedicated to the echoing shrieks of schoolchildren, the bracing odour of chlorine and those monuments to civic pride that are the public swimming pools of Britain.
And there is nothing shallow about this magnificent book which pays tribute to that most glorious aspect of civic life – the public indoor swimming bath. I freely admit to picking this book up with some anxiety as I feared it might be a hymn of praise to Spartan efficiency but my delight cannot be adequately described when I realised that an absolute treasure had fallen into my hands.
Great Lengths works at every level – it is a history of public baths that backstrokes into Roman history, takes a leisurely crawl through the golden age that followed the 1846 Act to Encourage the Establishment of Public Baths and Wash-houses and then sprints forward to the pre-2012 Olympic environment.
At no stage is it less than utterly fascinating and I challenge any reader to remain unimpressed by the monumental beauty of a predominantly working-class architecture facilitated by philanthropists and enlightened councillors and aldermen.
One statistic in particular makes you feel as though you’ve leapt into a plunge pool and lost your breath – that relating to the number of public baths in use. In 1880 there were 83 in England, two in Scotland and one in Wales (Ireland escapes the analyst – not for the first time!) That total of 86 rises to 604 in 1918, 804 in 1967, 1,076 in 1978 and a jaw-dropping 1,167 sites and 2,022 pools in 2008.
Broken down by sector, the figures in 1918 add 58 private sites and 69 pools; 95 sites and a 96 pools in schools and a rather mysterious ten “other”. By 2008 there were 1,438 private sites and 1,585 pools and, in the educational sector, 981 sites and 1,048 pools. “Others” have increased to 52 sites and 62 pools. Who on earth would have guessed that there were more than 2,000 public pools in operation today?
This wonderful book is blessed with a foreword by Rebecca Adlington: a truly poetic tribute to the Sherwood Baths in Mansfield where she set out on the long journey that led her to Beijing in 2008. She rightly credits the Nottinghamshire miners who subscribed and raised the money for the baths and allows those of us who just splash around to gain an insight into truly competitive swimming. She mentions the overhead lights as being so important to the hard training swimmer and this aspect of the architecture of the swimming bath is constantly referenced in the descriptions of the central oculus that was a feature of the classical masterpiece that was the Peerless Pool in Islington.
I don’t want to stray too far into one of the adjoining lanes by going into the history of swimming – although the good Dr Gordon rightly cites Plutarch during his dissertation on swimming history – as the glory of this book is the decoration and working class pride of our public pools and it is that which makes this book so cherishable.
Having said that, it is impossible to pass by Everard Digby’s De Arte Natandi, the earliest known swimming manual, published in 1587 when many people then living would be thought to have had other concerns uppermost in their minds.
By 1658 – again when other issues normally distract the historian – Everard Digby was translated as The Compleat Swimmer and the vampire-haunted Yorkshire seaport of Scarborough became a seaside resort and Bath regained some of its Roman eminence.
With the passing of the Butcher of Drogheda, and the coming of the Restoration, the far from Puritan pleasures of the bagnio began to distract the health conscious and people of less noble inclination. Just as “bath house” acquired a specific and non-sporting (in most senses of the words) connotation in San Francisco and Westbourne Grove so the bagnio fulfilled two distinct purposes and met two very different needs.
Bagnio became synonymous with brothel. The names of the Royal Bagnio (circa 1679) in Newgate Street and the King’s Bagnio (1682) in Long Acre implied a level of kingly participation not entirely at odds with our recollection of Charles II and there seems little doubt that there was a degree of rumpy-pumpy in and around the pump room.
Although the man behind the King’s Bagnio – which stayed open for business until 1876 – is described by Gordon and Inglis as a “feckless Naval Captain” and by Samuel Pepys as a “proud, idle fellow” he did not issue testimonials such as that of William Kemp, the jeweller who financed the Peerless Pool Baths, who claimed that a visit cured him of a head-ache. Nice justification!
Incidentally, the book refers to the Peerless Pool as originally being known as the Perrillous Pond on account of the number of youths who came to an unfortunate end there. Rebranding is not the modern invention that we might imagine it to be!
Parting the scented mists of the Alma Tadema world of the seraglio’s bagnio we see the early Victorian era as a time of great pool construction but with an emphasis on health rather than leisure or recreation.
New baths built between 1800-1840 included those at Edinburgh, Newcastle, Harrogate, Lancaster, Northampton, Oxford, Leamington, Exeter and Plymouth. The emphasis was on hydrotherapy and the curative effects of the plunge pool rather than healthy exercise but the stunning glories of the veritable temples that arose after 1846 were anticipated mostly by one city – Liverpool.
As far back as 1756 John Naylor Wright opened the first baths on the New Quay where private baths for both sexes were available – as was the challenging option of a voluntary descent into the Mersey. Liverpool’s city governance has had something of a bad press recently but it will always be proud of the Corporation Surveyor, John Foster Jr, who brought his love of Greek revival architecture to the Custom House, the first grandstand at Aintree and the utterly stunning St George’s Baths (1829).
This vast building on the Pierhead looks as though an ancient Assyrian Emperor has designed a low-lying palace. The central feature is an artfully designed chimney that echoes the mills and factories that were so much a part of Lancashire life and the whole edifice hangs together with a compact beauty which conceals the engineering marvels that raised river water by a steam engine into heating pans.
The modern councillor bedevilled by spatial strategies, impact assessments and the ear-splitting squeak of infuriated NIMBYs can only salivate with envy as this wondrous example of vision made reality without a single site visit by the planning committee or public enquiry.
Although I would like to believe that St George’s Baths were of the people and for the people they were actually accessible only by private subscription. However, a loathing of the corrosive and divisive British public school system does not demand that the beauty of Winchester or Marlborough be ignored because of the prohibition on working class entry.
Thankfully, the communitarian principles of Liverpool finally flourished in the form of the Frederick Street bath and wash house opened in 1842.
It was only when the Paul Street baths opened in 1846 that the people’s pool can really be said to have arrived and it is instructive to note that the three features of Paul Street precisely mirrored those priorities of the Baths and Wash-houses Act of that year.
Paul Street provided slipper baths, wash houses and a plunge pool. Ablutions, dhobying and exercise in one building. These three aspects – and possibly the prevention of drowning by learning to swim – formed the template for the post-1846 expansion as did the increased technological sophistication that allowed the massive Metropolitan Baths to be built and which meant that the Wenlock Baths, that adjoined the Metropolitan, featured a pool 180ft x 30ft that was the largest in Britain until the Empire Pool was opened at Wembley in 1934.
Gordon and Inglis have a wonderfully dry style – inappropriately for such a subject – and when they come to describe the character of Sir Henry Dukinfield, vicar of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields and the man behind the 1846 Act, they state: “Despite his background as a Baronet and an Old Etonian, Dukinfield earned a reputation for piety and hard work…”
Sir Henry opposed the concept that public baths could be financially self-sufficient or even profitable and it may well be that his experience of the 1832 cholera outbreaks motivated him to see the benefits of public health over profit. Whatever his motives, his name deserves to be recorded with Chadwick and John Snow.
After 1846 the floodgates opened, so to speak, and colossal structures such as Brill’s Gentlemen’s Baths in Brighton (1869) were built. This circular bath of 65ft in diameter was the largest sea water bath in Europe and was designed by George Gilbert Scott who Gordon and Inglis describe as the high priest of Gothic revival, although those of us who work in the Palace of Westminster may suggest other names.
In addition to corporation money the new baths were often built by philanthropic mill or factory owners and, although a strict Marxist would see an ulterior motive in the encouragement of a more healthy proletariat distracted from political realities by the false consciousness of the Alloa Baths, this is not the place for such an analysis.
To leaf though this book is to be constantly halted by the utter utilitarian beauty of so many of the Victorian buildings. Places such as Salford and Glossop, not previously known to this reviewer as homes to great architecture, reveal confident buildings in which technical success is garlanded by heart-stoppingly lovely glazed tiles and exquisite wrought ironwork.
From the Gothic splendour of the Ladywell Baths in Lewisham to the partially restored Victoria Baths in Manchester there are sights of such sheer quality as to make every person who once shivered at the Fulham Baths, as I did as an obnoxious schoolboy preparing to bomb off the diving board, wish to the depths of his soul that he had raised his eyes from the captivating Siobhan O’Malley and her rubberised floral bathing cap to the quiet understated wonder of the architecture that provided so much pleasure to the urban child.
Ian Gordon is chief medical officer for British Swimming and he brings the eye of the expert to the subject without losing sight of the built environment that contains the water. Simon Inglis is known and respected by those of us who pause to worship the elegance of the Stevenage Road stand at Fulham and his book Engineering Archie can be found on the shelf of most fervent Cottagers and admirers of Archibald Leitch. The swimming pool has brought them together, not in the sense of synchronised swimming but of complementary skills, and this book shows the strength and value of their collaboration.
I cannot remember when I was more surprised to enjoy a book on a subject that I had never considered – and I warmly recommend it to all Tribune readers. Once started, you will not put it down and once you have read it you will return again. That is the test of a great book and an apt description of the effect that Great Lengths will surely have on you.
Stephen Pound
About The Author
