One of Huddersfield’s oldest family businesses (founded 1864), still going strong today, however, one of their two sites on Queen Street has lain disused, and for sale for some time. On a small corner of said disused site is this wonderful Grade II listed purpose built bath house designed in 1955 by Abbey Hanson architects.
Text below from the listing, here if you’re interested and want a written walk through of the layout of the building: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1393532
The steel Engineering co. produced (and still does produce) all manner of useful machinery, much of its historical products are evident today throughout the mills and industrial buildings that are still being explored to this day. Cranes, water tanks and primarily, large centrifugal machines for extracting water from textiles are all prevalent throughout period industrial buildings both in the locality and nationwide.
As part of the war effort, they turned their iron and steel engineering expertise to producing bomb lifting platforms, 2 lb guns and even a number of miniature submarines that took part in the D-Day landings.
The site on which this bath house resides is home to buildings that were concerned with the storage of raw materials / finished products. However, being as the company’s production methods have presumably been modernised, its evident that they no longer required the large sheds, nor did they have the workforce to require an entire bath house. Evidence of personal effects, newspapers etc seem to point to it being used until about 2012/2013.
It reminded me somewhat of pit baths with central showers and clean / dirty sides for kit and home clothes, although with an element of luxury as there is a Sauna on the roof, whether this was reserved for management, who knows.
The fittings were mostly un-modernised and remained of the period, such as the shower heads, foot operated taps and the ventilated / heated locker system. There was clearly a fairly large plant area to heat the water / air for washing / drying but this was unfortunately locked up and was probably an asbestos mess according to the signage on the locked door.
Story is, @tweek was investigating (as you do, with some cans) the larger buildings, which turned out to be empty sheds (after a post crush glance through a window) I highlighted the fact that this fairly unassuming building on the site was in fact something fairly special according to the English Heritage site. Twerk nipped back to check out access and then off we went one Sunday evening.
A few photos:
A relaxing Sauna on the roof with exclusive views over the University quarter and the wider Colne valley.
Thanks for looking.
Text below from the listing, here if you’re interested and want a written walk through of the layout of the building: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1393532
English Heritage said:
The steel Engineering co. produced (and still does produce) all manner of useful machinery, much of its historical products are evident today throughout the mills and industrial buildings that are still being explored to this day. Cranes, water tanks and primarily, large centrifugal machines for extracting water from textiles are all prevalent throughout period industrial buildings both in the locality and nationwide.
As part of the war effort, they turned their iron and steel engineering expertise to producing bomb lifting platforms, 2 lb guns and even a number of miniature submarines that took part in the D-Day landings.
The site on which this bath house resides is home to buildings that were concerned with the storage of raw materials / finished products. However, being as the company’s production methods have presumably been modernised, its evident that they no longer required the large sheds, nor did they have the workforce to require an entire bath house. Evidence of personal effects, newspapers etc seem to point to it being used until about 2012/2013.
It reminded me somewhat of pit baths with central showers and clean / dirty sides for kit and home clothes, although with an element of luxury as there is a Sauna on the roof, whether this was reserved for management, who knows.
The fittings were mostly un-modernised and remained of the period, such as the shower heads, foot operated taps and the ventilated / heated locker system. There was clearly a fairly large plant area to heat the water / air for washing / drying but this was unfortunately locked up and was probably an asbestos mess according to the signage on the locked door.
Story is, @tweek was investigating (as you do, with some cans) the larger buildings, which turned out to be empty sheds (after a post crush glance through a window) I highlighted the fact that this fairly unassuming building on the site was in fact something fairly special according to the English Heritage site. Twerk nipped back to check out access and then off we went one Sunday evening.
A few photos:
A relaxing Sauna on the roof with exclusive views over the University quarter and the wider Colne valley.
Thanks for looking.
