A 1906 water palace in stained glass and tilework, saved by a television vote and still, twenty years on, not a working pool.
When it opened in 1906, Manchester Corporation called it “the most splendid municipal bathing institution in the country” and, unusually for civic boasting, it was probably true.
Victoria Baths cost £59,000 — a very large sum — and gave the working population of Chorlton-on-Medlock three swimming pools, a Turkish bath suite, private washing baths and a public laundry. This was a period when most houses in the district had no bathroom at all.
What it looks like
The building is a riot. Red brick and terracotta outside; inside, glazed tile in green, brown and cream over every surface, mosaic floors, and a set of stained-glass windows — including a famous Angel of Purity — that would not be out of place in a church.
There are three pools because there were three classes of user: Males First Class, Males Second Class, and Females. The signs are still up. It is a very direct piece of evidence about how Edwardian England organised itself, and nobody has tried to soften it.
The Turkish baths wing, with its hot rooms and cooling room, is the most atmospheric part of the building.
There is one further detail people enjoy: the water was filtered and reused down the hierarchy, so the second-class pool got the first-class pool’s water afterwards.
Closure and rescue
The city closed the baths in 1993, pleading cost. A campaign group formed immediately and refused to go away.
In 2003 the building won the first series of the BBC’s Restoration, a public vote that came with £3 million. That is genuinely why it still exists.
The honest part
Twenty years on, it is not a swimming pool. The Turkish baths wing has been restored and the building is stabilised and safe, but the money required to reopen a pool to modern standards is an order of magnitude beyond what a volunteer trust can raise, and successive funding rounds have not closed the gap.
So what you visit is a magnificent empty building, run by volunteers, opened on limited days, hosting weddings, film shoots, record fairs and art events to pay for itself.
That is not a failure. It is what saving a building of this scale actually looks like when the city that built it has walked away. But go expecting a monument rather than a leisure centre.
Open days usually include a tour, and the volunteers are extremely well informed. There is a small charge.
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