Public Baths

The Public Baths, including No. 2, are located on York Street in Barnsley and were built in 1872 by Wade and Turner. This building features an ashlar front with dressed stone sides and rear, topped with a Welsh slate roof. It is two storeys high with an attic and has an entrance block that is oriented at a 90-degree angle to the pool at the rear.

The entrance block has a symmetrical five-bay facade, with bays 2, 3, and 4 projecting forward, and bay 3 projecting the most. The ground floor includes single-storey, gabled porches for bays 2 and 4, which feature round-arched portals with pilaster jambs, engaged colonnettes, and pointed hoodmoulds. The windows on this level are 2-light segmental-headed sash windows with engaged colonnette mullions set on raised, bracketed sills. The first floor has similar round-arched windows with pointed hoodmoulds, but bays 2 and 4 contain smaller single lights. The central bay is gabled and has a small attic window. A deep Lombard frieze runs along the top, and the parapet features partly round-arched sections with corbelled round corner piers and gable copings. There is a tall ornamental stack on the right gable and a small central pyramidal roof.

The rear elevation of the bath building has three blind panels, while the left return displays five and a half bays of blind panels. An addition at the rear to the right features a tall, tapering ornamental chimney that is square at the base and octagonal at the top, complete with bands, a deep moulded cornice, and an ashlar cap.

Inside, the 20-yard pool and side cubicles have been refitted, but the original cast-iron columns and brackets, five on the sides and two at the ends, still support the former spectators' gallery, which is now boxed in by a lowered ceiling. The baths were officially opened on June 15th, 1874.