Mounts Baths is a public swimming baths in

Northampton Northampton ( ) is a town and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is the county town of Northamptonshire and the administrative centre of the Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority of West Northamptonshire. The town is sit ...

, England, built 1935—1936. It is notable for its

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

style. It is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, listed on 28 January 2013. It is regarded by

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ...

as "a particularly good example of a Modern Movement swimming pool", noting "especially the Art Deco hot rooms" of its Victorian-style Turkish bath, one of the last such baths still open in the British Isles.

History

Mounts Baths was built as part of a civic centre located on the site of a recently demolished prison. The civic centre also included a fire station with accommodation, and a police station and courts. The committee overseeing the construction was chaired by Councillor W. J. Bassett-Lowke. He was interested in

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

; the interior of his home, 78 Derngate, was remodelled in Art Deco style."Mounts Baths, Northampton"
Historic Pools of Britain. Retrieved 8 January 2020. A competition to design the baths was won by J. C. Prestwich & Sons of Leigh, Lancashire. It was built by A. Glenn & Son of Northampton;

Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners was a British firm of consulting civil engineers, founded in 1922 by Sir Alexander Gibb, and initially headquartered in London before moving west to Reading in Berkshire in 1974 to the former site of Suttons Seeds. I ...

were the engineers. Construction began in 1935, and the building was opened in October 1936.

Architecture

The front of the building is faced with

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

Bath stone Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate originally obtained from the Middle Jurassic aged Great Oolite Group of the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its h ...

. There are large tiered windows, in reinforced concrete frames, on the sides of the pool hall, and these are supported by eight parabolic arches of reinforced concrete. Historic England comments that the interior "resembles a cathedral nave flooded with light from the tiered clerestory"."Northampton’s Mounts Baths identified as world class"
Northampton Borough Council. Retrieved 8 January 2020. The dado around the pool hall is clad in stone-coloured

faience Faience or faïence (; ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white Ceramic glaze, pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an stannous oxide, oxide of tin to the Slip (c ...

, and the pool is clad in blue faience tiles. Doorways on the sides of the hall are framed with

Vitrolite Pigmented structural glass, also known generically as structural glass and as vitreous marble, and marketed under the names Carrara glass, Sani Onyx, and Vitrolite, among others, is a high-strength, colored glass. Developed in the United States i ...

panels. Ivory and black ceramic tiles are used in other parts of the building. There was provision for an open-air pool, which was never built. In the 1970s a single-storey extension was added for a teaching pool.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Northampton Grade II listed buildings in Northamptonshire Swimming venues in England Victorian Turkish baths Art Deco architecture in England 1936 establishments in England