8, Bishopsgate Churchyard

This is a former Turkish bath building, dating to 1894-5 and designed by S.Harold Elphick for James Forder Nevill. It was later altered in the late 20th century. The building is constructed from faience tiles, terracotta and brick, and displays an Islamic style.

It is a small, rectangular building with a polygonal apse. The building has a flat roof and a single storey, with two main rooms located below ground level, accessed by a staircase within the apse. The apse is clad in faience tiles: black at ground level, alternating bands of cream and brown up to sill level, and pale blue with a darker patterned frieze above. There is a star-shaped window on the east side, and two lancet windows with shaped heads on each side, all set in terracotta, with stained glass and linked by continuous, elaborately carved wooden mouldings. A deep terracotta entablature, elaborately ornate in the Islamic style, runs around the building. The apse is topped by a copper octagonal lantern with multifoil stained glass lights, a bracketed cornice, and a coloured glass onion dome with a metal star and crescent finial. The north side features an elaborate Islamic-style terracotta doorcase with attached columns and a multifoil arch. A late 20th century three-light window is adjacent to the doorcase.

The interior retains good, unusual Islamic-style tiled decoration. The lobby is lined with ornate, interlocking tiles, a design registered by Elphick, with a pink and white dado and green and white upper sections. Tiles continue down the stairwell, leading to the lobby, which features a tile-framed mirror. The two main rooms have ornate, multi-coloured tiled pillars, beams and cornices. One room includes framed panels of interlocking tiles with shallow niches and multifoil arches on colonettes. The other room features a tiled archway and panels of hand-painted tiles.

The baths were in use until the 1950s. When built, the site was very cramped, as Broad Street House stood over much of the bath complex, leaving limited space for the above-ground building. The planning of the building was praised in The Builder in February 1892.