[New post] Victoria Baths – a water palace of the past
Eunice posted: "When it opened in 1906 Victoria Baths, a symmetrical red brick and terracotta building on the outskirts of Manchester city centre, was described as "the most splendid municipal bathing institution in the country.'' Not only did the building provide spacio" Life In The Mouse House
When it opened in 1906 Victoria Baths, a symmetrical red brick and terracotta building on the outskirts of Manchester city centre, was described as "the most splendid municipal bathing institution in the country.'' Not only did the building provide spacious and extensive facilities for swimming, bathing and leisure, it was also built of the highest quality materials with many period decorative features including stained glass windows, ornate ceramic balustrades and mosaic floors.
The plan to provide a municipal Baths to serve the three wards of Longsight, St Luke's and Rusholme was first considered in 1897 by Manchester Corporation's Baths and Wash-houses Committee and a suitable site was purchased two years later. The building and its facilities were designed by the City Surveyor, T. de Courcy Meade and his assistant Arthur Davies with the work being supervised by Henry Price, the newly appointed city architect. Building started in 1903 and was completed in 1906 with the baths being opened in September that year by the Lord Mayor of Manchester. The final cost of £59,144 was more than double the cost of building other similar public baths but the council felt the extra expense was justified when the Mayor described the building as a ''water palace of which every citizen of Manchester can be proud."
In Victorian/early Edwardian times it was the norm for swimmers and bathers to be segregated by both gender and class so Victoria Baths had been built with three separate entrances, three separate swimming pools and separate wash baths - Males 1st Class, Males 2nd Class and Females, with the 1st Class facilities being slightly higher in price. Mixed bathing was eventually introduced with great caution in 1914 and by the 1920s sessions were held every Sunday morning, enabling families to swim together for the first time. The 1st Class entrance hall however was, and still remains, the most ornate of the three entrances and most of what can be seen today dates from 1906.
Ist Class entrance hall
Inside the ticket office1st Class stairway and landing
Ornate balustrade and wall tiles
Measuring 75ft x 40ft the Males 1st Class/Gala Pool is the largest of the three pools and tiered tip-up seating on the balcony provided spectators with excellent views of swimming galas, displays and water polo matches. The pool was designed so that it could be floored over during the winter months and used as a venue for dances and concerts, particularly popular during the post-war years, and in the 1950s bowls became a popular activity. Although the pool retains most of its 1906 features it was modified in the early 1960s when the original steps were removed and replaced with ladders and the troughs behind the arches at the deep end were replaced with showers.
Males 1st Class/Gala Pool
Balcony entrance, 1st Class pool
In 1986 the council renovated the Male 2nd Class Pool and converted it into a sports hall. Changing cubicles were removed and the pool itself drained and boarded over to be used for five-a-side football, badminton, netball and basketball.
Males 2nd Class Pool/Sports Hall
Measuring 75ft x 30ft the Females pool is the smallest of the three but in terms of original features it's the most intact. The stone steps down into the pool are still there as are the stone pool surrounds, the brass rails and brass overflow troughs.
The water for Victoria Baths came from a well which was specially sunk when the building was constructed, with hot water and heating for the whole building coming from huge Galloway boilers installed in 1906 and heated by coal-fired furnaces. Water for the pools was first used to fill the Males 1st Class pool then it was returned to the water tanks, filtered, aerated, reheated and used in the Males 2nd Class pool before being recycled again and used in the Females pool. Having the smallest pool and third-hand water didn't prevent swimming from being a very popular activity for women and girls in the early 20th century though, and most girls learnt to swim through their schools' swimming programme.
Entrance hall to Females Pool
The Turkish Baths suite included three hot rooms (the Tepidarium, Calidarium, and Laconicum) a Russian bath filled with very dense steam, a shampooing room, showers and a rest room. The hot rooms had rising heat levels with the Laconicum being the hottest, while the rest room was kept at a normal temperature to enable people to sufficiently cool down before getting dressed and going back outside. Although these facilities became very popular they were really aimed at those who were more affluent, however by the 1960s and 70s the price of taking a Turkish bath was within reach of many people and the facilities at Victoria Baths were used by a good cross-section of the Manchester community.
Turkish Baths hot rooms
In 1952 a former waiting room situated off the Females entrance hall was converted to provide a new facility - the Aeratone. Looking rather like something out of a medieval torture chamber the Aeratone Therapeutic Bath, the forerunner of today's Jacuzzi baths and hot tubs, was invented by a Scotsman, Professor William Oliver, with this one being the first to be installed in a public baths in England. Filled with vigorously bubbling warm water it was used to treat a variety of ailments which caused pain and stiffness - it was also very effective at treating sports injuries and was in regular use until 1993.
The Aeratone control unit
In the first half of the 20th century the Baths and Wash-houses Department was an important part of the city council with a Superintendent responsible for all the baths and wash houses in the city, and to reflect the status of this post an extensive flat was provided at Victoria Baths. Appropriately named Victoria House it had its own private entrance and occupied two floors with four bedrooms, two box rooms, a bathroom, kitchen, scullery, pantry and two sitting rooms although not all the rooms were accessible.
One of the two Superintendent's sitting rooms
Adjacent to the Superintendent's flat but not part of it was the Committee Room, and though it could be entered from the flat its main entrance was on the 1st Class landing. As well as being a formal meeting room it was also used as a reception room for buffets and gatherings after galas and events.
The Committee Room
In early 1993 Manchester City Council decided to close the Baths as it couldn't justify the high cost of maintenance and remedial repairs. This decision prompted huge protests including marches and an effort to occupy the building but despite all this the Baths were closed on 13th March and the building was earmarked for demolition. Further public outcry resulted in it being saved but sadly it was left derelict and deteriorating. The Friends of Victoria Baths group was formed that same year and began to investigate the possibility of running the place independently; The Victoria Baths Trust was then set up and registered as a charity.
Determined to eventually bring this beautiful building back to its former glory, in 1996 the Friends and members of the Trust started an extensive programme of work to prevent further deterioration and to help make the place accessible again. TV companies began to see the potential of Victoria Baths as a film location and filming for the crime drama City Central in 2000 led to the cleaning of the Gala pool and the clearing out of the resident pigeons.
In 2002 the building was chosen to be in BBC2's landmark Restoration series, competing against nine other UK buildings in danger of dereliction and worthy of being saved. The series was aired in September 2003 and Victoria Baths won with a massive 282,018 votes from the public. This resulted in a grant of £3 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund plus a grant of £450,000 from English Heritage, while the BBC's Restoration Fund raised nearly £500,000. It was intended that the money would be spent on re-opening the Turkish baths by around 2006 with other parts of the building following later, but the redevelopment plans were dealt a blow when quantity surveyors delivered a much larger than expected estimate just for the Turkish baths. The Heritage Lottery Fund requested further details about the full redevelopment before they would hand over any money for the first phase so final planning approval to begin restoration wasn't received until September 2005.
In September 2006, as part of a number of events held to mark the centenary of the building's opening, the 1st Class/Gala Pool was filled for the first time in 13 years and a floating sci-fi art installation was added. The first phase of restoration work began in March 2007 and was completed in September 2008 then in 2009 funds were secured for the next phase. In 2011 the building became licensed and its popularity as a concert and wedding venue, exhibition centre and events space has grown over the years since then while restoration, although not always obvious, continues.
The building has over a hundred stained glass windows and decorative door panels and though a few are featured on here it would be impossible to include them all. Some are just too beautiful to leave out though so I'll put those in a follow-up post along with the interesting stories of some of the people connected to Victoria Baths, including the norm-defying swimmer dubbed a 'harlot' and the young athlete who inadvertently sent Hitler into a strop simply by winning.
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