Old Swimming Baths

OLD SWIMMING BATHS

Public baths built in 1884 to designs by architects Wilson & Son and Thomas Aldwinkle, with contractors Hobbs of Croydon. The building is constructed in Gothic style with a red brick entrance front featuring blue brick details and sandstone dressings, set beneath a slate roof with brick chimneys.

The plan comprises an entrance lobby to the north with caretaker's rooms on the upper floors, a first class swimming pool hall running north to south, a second class pool hall to the rear, and a series of changing and bathing rooms to the east.

The principal elevation to Ladywell Road is composed of three distinct sections. The first section expresses the first class pool hall externally, with raised ridge lantern skylights and a raking dormer clerestory enlivened with circular and arched window panes. Three large arched openings pierce this section, each having a patterned brick tympanum, a sandstone lintel carrying three-light mullion and transom windows with circular and arched panes, and sloping blue brick sills. The arches have hood mouldings and sit beneath a moulded sandstone cornice with arched indents. The pool hall is flanked by two smaller sections resembling turrets, with sandstone capping pierced by arched openings and steep pitched slate roofs. A central round tower forms the second section, with moulded stone bands dividing the plinth, ground floor and first floor. The tower has five bays of arched windows with moulded surrounds beneath a stringcourse of blue brick tracing the curve of the arches. Ground floor windows have patterned brick tympana and sloping sills; first floor windows have circular openings with small circular indents in the sandstone tympana. The central first floor window is a two-light oriel window in sandstone, supported by a corbel course and capped with grey slate, reaching up to an elaborate sandstone cornice. The tower originally had a conical slate roof, now removed in the 20th century. The third section has a pitched roof, simple moulded sandstone cornice and an advancing bay to the east with three-light mullion windows to both storeys. The recessed portion contains a two-bay low-sprung arcade with stone stiff-leaf capitals on the ground floor and two two-light mullioned windows on the first floor.

Side elevations are in grey stock brick with regular window openings dictated by internal plan and function. The rear shows the gable end of the first class pool with a central round window and two round-headed windows beneath; some rebuilt brickwork is visible at the apex following an arson attack in 2006 which destroyed much of the second class pool. The gable end of the first class pool is visible, with a curved end to the main block. A tall battered boiler chimney with a stepped brick stringcourse stands in a central courtyard.

The interior contains an impressive first class pool hall with an open curved brace timber roof, a slender iron tie beam, and a gallery on three sides with iron balustrade carried on cast iron columns. Ridge skylights provide illumination. The changing cubicles that ran beneath the gallery have been removed. The pool has been covered over; its glazed bricks were replaced with tiles in the 20th century. The second class pool hall suffered a serious fire and is no longer of interest; its shallow timber king post roof and ridge skylights remain damaged, with burnt rafters and missing skylights. The remainder of the interior is largely intact but plain, with several rooms retaining single slender iron columns supporting the roof and small sections of panelling. The changing and bathing rooms are largely bereft of their original tilework, partitioning and slipper baths.

The Ladywell Baths were erected in 1884 at a cost of £9,000 on a site procured by the vicar of the adjacent St Mary's Church. The location on the main road into Ladywell from Brockley, Catford, Lewisham and Hither Green was strategically chosen. Public vestries were first permitted to levy a rate for baths and washhouses under an Act of 1846, though this initially restricted provision to slipper baths, laundries and open-air pools. An 1878 amendment encouraged the building of covered swimming baths. Few authorities adopted the Act before the 1890s, when baths began to flourish. Lewisham Vestry, however, was notably progressive, appointing seven Commissioners in 1882 to obtain funds and land to build two swimming pools at Ladywell and Forest Hill. By 1900, public baths were being built in large numbers and with increasing elaboration.

The baths were opened on 25 April 1885 by Viscount Lewisham, MP, who remarked that aside from the Paddington Baths, there were no others in London of that size. The Forest Hill baths opened the following week. Contemporary reporting in the Kentish Mercury of 1 May 1885 described the baths as quite an ornament to the neighbourhood, standing in striking contrast to the ancient church behind it. A local paper commented on the juxtaposition of church and baths, noting that cleanliness was next to Godliness. Charges for use were sixpence for the first class pool and twopence for the second class. The pools were reserved for ladies bathing on two days each week.