The Bath House

The Bath House, St Leonards on Sea

This building comprises a Turkish baths with a later covered salt water swimming pool. The northern part was built in 1864 as a Turkish baths for the Turkish Bath Company Saint Leonard-on-Sea Limited, designed by London architect H Burton. The attached south swimming pool was built around 1871 for the newly established St Leonard's School in Archery Road. The building is in Gothic Revival style.

The structure is constructed of red brick in English bond, painted, with a stucco parapet to the front elevation. It has a hipped roof, originally slate-clad but currently covered with concrete tiles, and a truncated eastern chimneystack.

The northern part is a one-storey building with basement, originally housing the manager's office and gentlemen's waiting room on the left, and a waiting room for ladies on the right, with basement boiler room and later entrance, changing facilities and plant room. To the south is a double-height swimming pool of six bays.

The symmetrical entrance block to the north has brick dogtooth cornicing and a stucco-finished banded parapet with paired pyramidal-topped pinnacles over the entrance and end piers with triangular finials. Window and door heads feature contrasting surrounds forming pointed arched openings, with a pedimental hood mould to the entrance, contrasting impost level chevron string mould, and window cill level string mould. Brick window surrounds contain paired Early English style Gothic openings of stone with plate window tracery and a centre quatrefoil over a central column carrying a foliate capital. Internally the windows are sash windows with verticals only. All wall surfaces are currently over-painted. The roof is coupled with hipped ends and an eastern elevation chimneystack reduced to eaves level.

Behind is a symmetrically-arranged pool block with sandstone plinth walling and red brick above. It has a large coupled roof with hipped ends, originally slate-clad but currently covered in concrete tiles. A continuous clerestory window band runs at mid-height level. Leaded stained glass windows are either original or of around 1900. The roof lights to the upper roof are probably not original.

Internally, the entrance block contains one room to the northeast and two to the northwest, including a tiled cloakroom, with original timber panelled doors. Access to the pool hall from the entrance block is by a radial plan timber stair with swept balustrade and handrail. The pool hall has a fully exposed timber roof structure with strong Gothic Revival influences. A series of scallop-carved and roundel-decorated roof trusses incorporates braced kingposts, with multiple bracing at the hip ends and pendants to the undersides of the tiebeams and principal rafters, and curved bracing at the eaves. Curved kingpost braces extend to the upper half of the trusses, raising the roof for the clerestory. The roof is fully boarded. The wall frame has chamfered upright posts with moulding below, and bolted curved braces. Solid brick walls are plaster-finished and currently sheeted over with plain-faced board, possibly asbestos board. The perimeter width of the floor area is finished in quarry tile in a chequerboard pattern as the perimeter to the original pool. The whole central area of the original pool is oak-boarded on a timber beam structure. The pool area, sloping from 900 to 1800 centimetres depth, is lined with white ceramic tiles.

The Turkish baths were built following a fire that destroyed an earlier Russian baths owned by Mr Groslobb on West Hill. The company was founded in 1863, and Emil Groslobb was appointed proprietor. The baths opened on 8 August 1864. The design was unusual in being styled like a Russian banya or steam bath rather than a traditional Turkish baths. Facilities included a cooling room with changing cubicles, a hot room or caldarium with hot air passing through floor ducts and benches at various heights, a tepidarium, a separate shampooing room, and a washing area with needle shower, douche bath and shower bath. There was also a private bath for invalids. The boiler and ancillary equipment were housed in the basement. Prices ranged from one shilling and sixpence to five shillings. An open space was retained to the rear for an intended swimming pool, which had not been built by 1869 when the baths closed and the company went into liquidation.

The building was sold to the newly established St Leonard's School, which occupied Archery villas (listed Grade II) built by James Burton. The date 1871 is inscribed over the entrance. A purpose-built covered sea water swimming bath was constructed to the south of the Turkish baths. The whole building is shown on William Gant's map surveyed in 1874, where it is called St Leonard's School Swimming Baths.

A late 19th-century photograph shows the entrance block before the brickwork was painted, revealing decorative polychrome brickwork. The parapet to the front elevation originally had a pierced stone parapet with trefoils and decorative ironwork cresting to the roof. There were two tall brick chimneystacks: the eastern one built to extract smoke from the boiler heating the air for the Turkish baths, and the western one part of the boiler house heating water for the swimming pool.

The building remained in school use until the 1930s. Afterwards it was used by St Leonard's Church congregation whilst their own church was being rebuilt following enemy action in 1944. From 1958 a glass manufacturing company occupied the building, and since 1978 it has been used as a small workshop facility. It was unoccupied at the time of survey.