Old Military Swimming Baths

These are old military swimming baths, dating from 1900 and designed by J.S. Smith FRIBA, with minor alterations made in the 20th century. The building is constructed of English bond red brick with Welsh slate gable-ended roofs; the entrance vestibule has a hipped roof and a large lead-clad dome.

The plan consists of a main rectangular bath range, a shorter parallel range to the southwest, and a large square entrance vestibule to the northeast. The interior of the vestibule is in a classical and late Victorian Baroque style.

The main bath range features large battered brick buttresses. Those at the northwest end have tent-shaped stone weathering flanking a high window with a segmental arch, a moulded brick panel, and the date 1900 with a wrought-iron coronet above. A semi-circular apse is flanked by buttresses at the southeast end. The southwest range is smaller and parallel to the main bath range. The large entrance vestibule on the northeast has three-light segmental-headed windows with casements and glazing bars, a hipped roof with a brick parapet, and a large lead-clad dome with a finial and glazed drum. A large, later 20th-century glazed timber porch is located on the northwest side of the entrance vestibule.

The interior of the pool is lined with glazed bricks. The large entrance vestibule includes arcades with panelled piers supporting the dome and its glazed drum. There are stairs with a cast-iron balustrade leading to a gallery with bowed cast-iron balustrades, and a viewing gallery overlooking the main bath range. The pool is lined in glazed tiles and has a grab moulding around the edge. The elaborate iron roof has curved tie-beams with wrought-iron pendants below the truss-posts, and axial lattice-work arcades to the queen-posts.

Historically, the baths were commissioned after Colonel J.S. Napier, Inspector of Gymnasia for the Army, raised approximately £12,000 from funds associated with the Royal Military Tournament. Prior to the baths’ construction, soldiers at Aldershot swam in the Basingstoke Canal and the Cove Reservoir. The building is an impressive example of military swimming baths at the British Army’s principal garrison.