A bit of vintage ..... heaps of history .... all in a day at Victoria Baths

 Yesterday we dopped into Victoria Baths.

It is a place I have known and walked past heaps of times since I first arrived in the city over 50 years ago.

But that said it is also a place I never went into, and that is a shame.

So, on the strength of two tickets to the Vintage Home Show on Sunday we discovered the former baths, which opened 1906, Victoria Baths and “was described as ‘the most splendid municipal bathing institution in the country’ and ‘a water palace of which every citizen of Manchester can be proud.’

The building provided spacious and extensive facilities for swimming, bathing and leisure. 

It was built of the highest quality materials with many period decorative features: stained glass, tiles, and mosaic floors.

Victoria Baths served the people of central Manchester for 87 years and established themselves in the affections of all those who used the facilities”. *

I could say more about its history, the campaign to save it and its present role as a “popular heritage, events and community venue” but I would only be lifting the information from their own excellent web site so I won’t, other than suggest you follow the link link to them. *

The Vintage Home Show was that mix of “stuff” much of which was commonplace in most homes in the middle decades of the last century but has now gained the title of vintage.

And that is a bittersweet thing for me, because having been born in the first half of the last century, grown up in the 1950s, became a teenager in the 60s and a proper adult in the 1970s, most of what was on offer didn’t feel vintage to me, but just the backdrop to my life.

But its presence for sale here in Victoria Baths was a recognition that I too have become vintage …..  perhaps not with the price tag that accompanies so many of the items but still a walking example of old.

All of which could be painful, more so when I think how cheap some of the objects were when they entered our house, but I will desist and instead reflect on the architecture of the Baths.

It is an ornate and impressive public building and reminded me of the one in Deptford I used to go.

It too was full of glazed coloured tiles which looked good and were easy to clean and like Victoria Baths had a series of pools given over to mixed bathing as well as a segregated alternative.

More than the grandeur it was the memories that came flooding back, memories of walking into the swimming baths on a cold February day and being hit by the wall of warm and the smell of chlorine. 

A sensation which could be overpowering and had the ability to cause you to start perspiring almost before you had got into the changing cubicles.

And afterwards the way that your clothes did not feel as comfortable, which might have had something to do with damp socks and the tangled underwear which in my case was because I never dried myself properly.

Nor were you ever prepared for walking back out of warm steamy place into the cold on the other side of the door, or that ravenous appetite which usually meant ending up in the chip shop on the way home.

So, did I enjoy the Vintage Home Show?  

Yes, up to a point but how much more fun was it to walk through the baths themselves.

Location; Victoria Baths

Pictures, inside Victoria Baths, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Victoria Baths, https://victoriabaths.org.uk/about/