Nottingham Civic Society - The Nottingham Hammam

Last September the BBC TV programme ‘Restoration’ sparked a good deal of debate about the preservation of our architectural treasures from the past. As is so often the case nowadays it was inter-active, inasmuch as viewers were required to vote for a winner. This turned out to be the Victoria Baths of Manchester, a sumptuous and colourfully tiled ‘palace of hygiene’ in Art Nouveau style, which opened in 1906.

Included in the building were Turkish (and Russian) baths, which reminded me of Nottingham’s golden era of such delights. The expert on Victorian Turkish baths in the British Isles is Malcolm Shifrin who offers this definition of them: ‘a type of bath in which the bather sweats freely in a room heated by a continuous flow of hot dry air followed by washing, sometime preceded by a cold plunge, then by massage, and relaxation in a cooling-room.’ This is much more helpful than the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which defines hammam simply as ‘an Oriental bathing establishment, a Turkish bath.’ Typically, the Romans built them first but they were called Turkish baths when they were introduced into the British Isles in 1856 by David Urquhart, a Scottish diplomat who first encountered them in Turkey.

In their heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century there were at least seven Turkish baths in Nottingham, though not all at the same time. They were in Gedling Street (sometimes referred to as in Bath Street), the Scotholme Baths in Gladstone Street, the Victoria Company’s Baths at 5 Lower Talbot Street, in Newthorpe Street, Stanley Place, Lloyd Street and, of course, the Nottingham Hammam. B.J. Dabell’s establishment on Lloyd Street in Sherwood was converted into two dwelling houses in 1892 only two years after opening, but other baths lasted much longer. Those on Gedling Street survived from 1861 to 1894, when the whole site was re-developed as the Victoria Baths, but they were never satisfactory and the Borough Engineer, Ogle Tarbotton, had drawn up new plans as early as 1876.

Possibly influenced by the closure of the Turkish baths on Gedling Street, which reduced the competition, a group called The Nottingham Turkish Baths Company Limited submitted plans for a luxury establishment on Upper Parliament Street in August 1896. The architects were Brewill and Baily who designed an unusual ‘Moorish looking’ stone and brick facade and interior. The baths opened in May 1898 and the Company issued a little booklet titled ‘The Nottingham Hammam Un Etablissement de Luxe’, which descibes the facilities in full detail. The intention was to ‘render the duty of cleanliness a rose-leafed pleasure.’

The main entrances were on Parliament Street but there was also a private one for the staff on Wollaton Street. The decoration was in keeping with the Moorish style. The lower part at the front between the doorways - one for ladies and one for gentlemen - was faced with Hollington stone. The rest was red brick apart from the ‘fancy stone work’ on the upper part, ornamented with the city coat of arms and the monogram of the Company in Lawrence rubber bricks. The building was roofed with green slates.

The interior arrangements for ladies were similar to those for gentlemen but on a smaller scale, as less were expected to attend. Gentlemen first entered the boot room where they undressed and left clothes and valuables in lockers. They went into the first hot room, kept at a temperature of 150ºF, then after a while ventured into the other hot room where the temperature was 75ºF higher. (Phew!). The marble dado in these rooms was relieved with buff terracotta and the floors were of vitreous glass mosaic. ‘After being reduced to a state of liquidity’, as the booklet coyly states, bathers moved on to the shampooing rooms where they were massaged on marble slabs. Here, in recesses under Moorish arches, they could also indulge in needle baths and shower baths providing ascending and descending douches.

After that the bathers slid into the plunge bath, which was about 23feet long and up to 8feet deep, faced with white enamelled bricks and coloured marble, where the theme of Moorish arches was repeated. From there they proceeded to the frigidarium, or cooling room, which contained ten separate apartments each big enough to accommodate two ‘should the bathers go accompanied by a friend.’ From the photograph in the booklet the frigidarium has rather the look of a Georgian chapel with high box pews. Finally they would relax in the retiring room, with its handsome fountain, where they could light up cigars and drink coffee.

The Company declared that ‘bathing as an art is experiencing a revival in England’ for the first time since the indulgences of the Roman Empire. It also claimed that Turkish baths were a cure for flu and ptomaine poisoning, reminding us that it was, after all, a commercial venture.

The heyday of the Nottingham Hammam was over by 1917 when the Corporation bought the premises for £5,400. But, in spite of improvements, the Baths never proved as popular as the Baths Committee had hoped, and their closure was announced in November 1939. They were closed for the duration of the Second World War but the building was used by the Health Department as a skin clinic. A plan to re-open the Baths in 1947 was abandoned when the £20,000 needed to renovate them was not found. In 1954 the Ministry of Health decided against their purchase so in the following year the building was sold to the Nottingham Co-operative Society for £30,000.

The Co-op already owned the adjacent site, which was the bus terminus for Barton’s in the 1920s. On the other side of that space was the Odd Hour Cinema, which started life in 1914 as the Regal, later to become Parliament Street Picture House, then from 1935 to 1956 the News House. Finally from July 1956 to April 1957 it changed to the Odd Hour, which lasted just the odd month. The Co-op went ahead with the demolition of it and the Turkish baths in 1959 in order to build a five-storey department block, which never materialised. While making no claims for a comparison of Nottingham's Hammam with the Victoria Baths of Manchester it looks to have been a far more attractive building than the dreary ones currently on the site.

Terry Fry
January 2004

*The Victoria Turkish Bath Databank
Librarian: M. R Shifrin, 29 Clinton Road, Leatherhead, KT22 8NU.

Malcolm Shifrin, Getting excited over a load of hot air: local history and the Victorian Turkish bath, Local History Magazine No 57 Sept/Oct 1996.

For those who may not be familiar with some of the services here are a few brief definitions:-
Russian Bath: similar to Turkish, but with the added pleasure (?) of being tapped with wet birch rods.
Sitz Bath: in which only the buttocks and hips are immersed in water.
Slipper Bath: shaped like a slipper.
Needle Bath: for the Jet Set?

THE NOTTINGHAM HAMMAM