Features / Investigations
Behind the scenes: Jacob’s Wells Road Baths
The history of Jacob’s Wells Road Baths is absorbed into the architecture of the building. If you walk past the café area, which used to be the hot male baths in the 1800s, you reach the main hall. In the building, there are dozens of bizarre little corners of interest. Even the old toilets are an attraction. The shape of the swimming pool is carved out by the rosewood floor, marked by slippery swimming pool tiles. The old changing rooms are still there, now used as storage. A theatre workshop is going on as Dina takes me round the building.
There’s a large “no access” sign on a door at the edge of the hall. Unlocking the door and creaking it open, Dina reveals an enormous cavernous space. It’s the old boiler room. The darkness is thick. The sound and smell are striking. The whole room feels like it’s sagging with the weight of the damp. Simultaneously inside and outside, a patch of garden is revealed through broken windows at one end. The dripping water tanks above were used to heat coal, linking to the old pipes that now creak around the desolate room. The metal stairs, which are cordoned off by warning tape, lead down to tall columns rooted into the floor. The whole space looks like an elaborate set, delicately made to look intensely fragile. It has a strange beauty to it.
is needed now More than ever
Back out the main hall, we walk down a narrow corridor. Dina pauses by a large graffiti painting on one wall. She leans into the painting and suddenly pulls the centre of it back. It’s a secret door. We climb inside to a small stone room, under metal rods, over rusting nails, and up through another door. An enormous network of scaffolding stretches out. We’re in the swimming pool, under the rosewood floor. Six or seven feet deep, the underwater handrail still runs along the tiled wall to help the less strong swimmers. Somehow, it still smells like chlorine. There’s a rumble above as a drama workshop takes place above us, the new uses of the building burrowing through to the old.