How interesting, let’s hope they treat these baths better than the magnificent Victoria Baths near Belle Vue which were left almost to the point of collapse by the deliberate neglect of the then Manchester City Council!
Saved by public interest.
It seems these you have drawn our attention to may also have a been Public Wash House ,ie a place where women could do the laundry ,hot water and often heated drying racks .
Many of the surrounding houses would not even have had cold water,let alone hot water.The true back to backs would not even have a yard ,the houses being only single room deep, with the luxury of a privy or two an Earth privy or two between up to a hundred dwellers ..
Each house had three rooms ,one above the other with a ladder ( no room for a staircase) to get to the bedroom and another to the attic.
Several families would live in such houses and often as one family went to work and quitted their room ,another would finish theur shift and get into the beds quitted by those. going on shift .
People call terraced houses back to backs ,but they are not.
Such a washouse/ laundry would be a godsend.
Plus a bathhouse , it really was a great improvement.
Not far away is the remains of a church StAndrew’s ,flattened in The Manchester blitz, its graveyard us covered by a concrete raft .
It was such a big church it would have replaced The Cathedral had that been badly damaged .
Thanks, that is interesting.
Viktoria.
