Manor Place Baths And Attached Wall, Piers And Railings

Manor Place Baths and attached walls, piers and railings

This building is now used as a storage depot and offices for the Borough's Division of Public Works. It was built in 1895 for the Parish of St Mary Newington, with EB I'Anson as architect and Balaam Brothers as builders. The parish clerk was LJ Dunham. A plaque in the main stair hall records the date.

The structure is constructed in brick laid in Flemish bond with terracotta dressings. The centre block has high hipped roofs of slate, while the clock tower features a convex mansard in metal. The bathing hall roofs are gabled with a light monitor clerestory to the ridge.

The building is arranged as follows: a three-storey centre block of offices with a two-window range; side wings of two storeys with three windows each. To the left stands a four-stage clock tower with a one-window range. Further east is a single-storey shed with a facing gable in the centre and a ten-window range in all, which housed the second-class bath. All openings on the Manor Place elevation are flat-arched unless otherwise stated.

The office block presents a roughly symmetrical composition incorporating Arts and Crafts and Flemish Renaissance elements. The ground floor has four pairs of camber-arched openings. Above these, a pair of buttresses rises through the ground floor to support a canted bay with tripartite windows, the central one round-arched. The second floor has double windows, slightly projecting and alternating with single windows, topped by an entablature with dentil cornice. Above the eaves of the centre block, each bay terminates in a Dutch scroll gable, with a square cupola and finial on the ridge. Tall stacks address the returns.

The right-hand wing contains two round-arched entrances in the first and third bays, with a two-storey canted bay between them finishing in a high hipped roof. The left wing's centre range projects on the ground floor on console brackets to support a canted bay. Three camber-arched windows light the ground floor on either side of the bay range, with a double-light window flanking the first-floor bay. A pair of round-arched entrances with terracotta keystones serve the clock tower range, with a two-light window above on the first floor. The top stage of the tower is treated as a blind arcade with corner pilasters and round-arched bell openings; the clock face sits in the tympanum. The easternmost wing has segmental-arched windows set high in the wall, with narrow pilaster strips articulating the elevation into three parts, the centre topped by a pediment.

Behind the offices fronting Manor Place lies a very large rectangular bathing hall with a gabled roof and glazed light monitor on the ridge axis. It extends ten bays and is supported by thin metal trusses composed largely of tension bars. The walls are of white glazed brick. The gable ends are pierced by wheel windows with coloured glass in the pattern of the Parish's arms. The original metal-fronted gallery has been removed.

The boiler to the south-east corner of the site has a square base that broaches to a battered octagonal stack, finishing in a ring treated as blind arcading.

A single-storey shed by the railway viaduct, also rectangular in plan, has been converted to an employees' cafeteria. Its interior and that of the locker room to the south are of little architectural merit when measured against the exceptionally broad-spanned and lengthy great bathing hall, which represents the chief architectural interest of the complex after the Manor Place elevation.

The interior is otherwise plain, with the exception of a metal staircase in the main office block.

The listing includes attached walls, piers and railings.