The 'Central Bath' Building – A Swimming Pool That Became a Bicycle Factory

The former Central Bath building on the corner of Clerkenwell Road and Saint John Street in London is an 1870s curved structure that was transformed from a short-lived Victorian swimming pool into a bicycle parts electroplating factory. Designed by architect Robert Walker and completed in 1878, the glass-roofed bath closed in 1896. E. C. Furby and Sons then used the site for nearly 80 years, converting soaking tubs into metal plating baths.

London · from the walk “Clerkenwell Uncovered: From the World's First Tube to London's Radical Heart” · audio ~3 min · Generated

2 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1M 5PP

What was London's Central Bath building converted into after it closed in 1896?

Take a look at this distinctive curved building on the corner of Clerkenwell Road and Saint John Street. It might look like just another London office building today... but behind those white brick walls lies one of Clerkenwell's strangest transformations.......... What would you say this building was originally built for? A factory? A warehouse? How about... a swimming pool?......... This is the former Central Bath, and it has quite a story. The south-eastern corner here was developed in eighteen seventy-seven to seventy-eight as a speculative venture incorporating baths for swimming and bathing, along with houses and shops. It was designed by Robert Walker, district surveyor for Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, and built by J. J. Bennett and Company. The principal developer was a gentleman named Alfred Bompas of Barnsbury, who applied for the site from the Metropolitan Board of Works in eighteen seventy-six.......... Now, imagine this... a glass-roofed swimming pool right here on this busy corner. The curved building had a glass roof, and was called the Central Bath. But there was a problem. Victorians, it turned out, did Not fancy swimming in the cold winter months. So during the darker season, the pool was boarded over and the space was used for public meetings instead. This was actually a common practice across London. Many pools in the city were regularly covered in winter to host boxing matches and other events.......... But the Central Bath didn't last long. The establishment was short-lived. And here's where it gets wonderfully weird. The baths closed in eighteen ninety-six, and from then until the nineteen seventies, the building was occupied by E. C. Furby and Sons, electroplaters and enamellers of bicycle parts. That's right... the old slipper baths, where Victorians once soaked in private tubs, were converted into plating baths for dipping bicycle handlebars and frames into gleaming nickel and chrome!......... And the timing was no coincidence. The eighteen nineties saw one of the biggest bicycle crazes of all, driven by the invention of the safety bicycle and the pneumatic tire. Between eighteen ninety-five and ninety-seven, nearly seven Hundred cycle companies were floated on the stock exchange. Clerkenwell was already the heart of London's precision trades... watchmakers, jewellers, engravers. The electroplating and bicycle themes continued all along Clerkenwell Road.......... So Furby and Sons rode that wave for nearly Eighty years, turning a failed swimming pool into a thriving bicycle parts workshop. A building that started in water... ended up making metal shine.

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