One of the UK’s last public Turkish baths may close this month unless campaigners can change the council’s mind in time.
Carlisle’s Victorian-style baths opened in 1909, and were awarded Grade II listing in 2010 in recognition of their decorative tiling and glazed stonework, as well as the stained-glass ceiling above the plunge pool.
One of the most affordable Turkish baths in the UK, with entry costing £7.10, they have a devoted community of regulars who put the world to rights in the sauna and three hot rooms several nights a week.
But Carlisle city council decided to mothball the complex after investing £27m in a new leisure centre on the other side of town. That is due to open in mid-October, when staff from the operators, GLL/Better, are due to transfer to the new site.
Time is tight to save the baths, with councillors set to decide on Monday 3 October whether to close the site or maintain it, while campaigners work on a plan to take over and develop the baths as a community asset.
They hope to transform the site into a “health and wellbeing centre”, turning one of the pools into a hydrotherapy facility, opening up treatment rooms and installing extras, such as an ice grotto alternative to the plunge pool.
Running the site costs about £15,000 a month, the council estimates, with heating bills likely to rise in the coming months. Twelve bathers are allowed for each session, with attendees limited by the number of curtained changing rooms, each with a bed for relaxing post-sweat or steam.
The regulars are distraught at the prospect of losing their sanctuary. “I’d be lost without it, to be honest,” said Donna Darlington, a beauty therapist who comes at least once a week. “It’s so important for my mental health.”
Gill Roncarelli, who started coming 23 years ago to soothe her aching limbs while working as head of dance at the University of Cumbria, says that after each visit, “you feel like you’ve been on holiday”.
Iain Young said he comes to the baths up to four times a week – “It’s addictive” – for the camaraderie as much as the health benefits. “We have one or two chaps who have depression and they feel safe talking about it in the sauna. It’s amazing how a bathing costume can level the field,” Young said.
One regular is a recovering alcoholic who started coming at weekends when all his friends were going to the pub, said Julie Minns, the chair of Friends of Carlisle Victorian and Turkish Baths, which has secured funding for a viability study for the group’s proposal. “He said it’s done wonders for his mental health.”
Her mother, Freda, 88, remembers coming to the baths in the 1960s when attendants gave massages, and would deliver tea and toast to bathers cooling down in the cubicles. “She would arrived stressed after a shift in the factory and would say she left feeling a million dollars,” said Minns.
The first Turkish baths in Britain and Ireland opened in 1852 in County Cork and, over the course of the next century, about 700 were built. Only 12 remain in operation, nine of which are public, and Carlisle’s are the last in the north-west of England.
Turkish baths are known for their healing waters. The original sign for Carlisle’s baths suggests people should take regular baths for the “alleviation of rheumatism and kindred ailments, general tonic effect, obesity and alleviation of stress”.
