Class apart

Class apart

Withington Baths, Manchester’s last chance to swim like an Edwardian

I’m splashing around in dappled sunlight – it brings out the bottle green of the tiles. The roof’s steel rafters cast geometric shadows across the swimming pool’s water. Seven-year old Nell is balancing on a float. Other parents with young children surround me, enjoying a dip on the first Sunday of the school summer holidays.

Withington claims to be Manchester’s last working Edwardian bath house, and it is a treat to behold. Occupying a corner site, it was designed to provide three pools, baths and a laundry. Designed by Henry Price, for Manchester Corporation, the foundation stone was laid in 1911. Red brick, with elaborate stone dressings form the exterior, which is enlivened with organic art nouveaux motifs. Inside, ceramic green floral wreaths pick out the cream tiled walls.

It is a modest pool, just 23m long, approximately 80cm deep at the shallow end, 160 cm deep at the other, with wooden changing spaces arranged along the sides of the pool. Original tile work, stone coping, and brass rails lend a period opulence: illumination and ventilation come from a steel-framed monitor roof.

In 2015, as austerity forced local authorities to thin out leisure provision, the Baths faced closure. Happily, a vigorous community campaign took over the facility, secured lottery funding, restored the pool and reanimated the site. That it took me some effort to secure a timed swim slot, and both gyms appeared busy when I arrived, suggests a well-directed initiative.

The Baths’ physical presence would doubtless be largely recognisable to their original customers. The social framing of leisure, meanwhile, has changed almost beyond compare. Withington, which opened in 1914, was the first pool in Manchester to allow men and women swim side by side. Bathers were still divided into first and second class customers, however. No doubt this reflected prevailing class distinctions. Many ‘gentlefolk’ would not have wished to tread water beside manual workers and their families, and quite possibly visa versa. 

There was a practical distinction in the amphibian experiences, however. Every Saturday night, fresh water was admitted to the first-class pool; its week-old fill emptied into the second-class pool. By the end of its second week of use, the water in the second class pool was so dirty that entry was half price.

It is impossible today not to balk at such stratification. This approach was pervasive in the 1900s, however. See, for example the legislatively-defined distinction between public, private and state schools, or the many First World War memorials that commemorate ‘The officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of’ whatever was the regiment. 

Segregation at the baths was reflective of a population that was geographically concentrated, but socially mixed. When these Baths opened, half the homes in Withington lacked internal plumbing. But there are also streets hereabouts of larger houses accommodating families and their servants. At the time of the bath’s construction, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and scientist Ernest Rutherford lived in the neighbourhood.

It could well be that the income and opportunity gulf today between users of David Lloyd’s club in Cheadle (family membership approx £400 pcm), and Moss Side Leisure Centre (cost of a swim £4.95) is every bit as stark as encountered by Edwardian bathers. The life expectancy metric certainly bears this out – those living in the wealthiest areas of Manchester live on average, seven years longer than those in the most economically challenged neighbourhood*.

The real change is that today, greater mobility allows us to imagine that rigid social distinctions have evaporated. The truth, however, is that neighbourhoods such as Withington are less socially diverse that once they were. We bask in an egalitarian myth when, in truth, we are no longer even sharing the water.

I enjoyed my immersion in Edwardian Manchester enormously. Drying and dressing, however, I reflecting that allowing social class to determine the allocation of opportunities is a stain whose removal will require more than one trip to the bath house. 

Booking a swim is slightly involved. The Withington Baths site initially told me that all the available places were full, but invited me to join a waiting list. I joined the waiting lists for several slots on the day that I wanted to swim. Later that day, I received notification that places were available for several slots. To accept one of these, I had to download and register with the app Gymcatch. An adult swim was £4, a child £2.

* Average life expectance in the wealthiest fifth of the city is 80.55 years, in the least wealthy fifth of the city it is 73.65 years.