The legacy of our beautiful Grade II listed building.
Discover the history
The story of Southport’s Victoria Baths dates back to 1839. State-of-the-art bath houses were opened as part of a drive for facilities to support health, recreation, and leisure. Victoria Baths has adapted over the years, in the 1980s it was converted for a range of uses including a health club, a nightclub, bars, and a squash club.
A luxurious leisure facility
Southport’s Victoria Baths was a luxurious facility for an exciting new coastal resort. After the arrival of the railway and the UK’s longest Iron Pier sent visitor numbers to the town rocketing, the baths were rebuilt on an even grander plan, with the best of everything. The baths six pools (the most in any British bathing centre before or since) were filled with over a million litres of fresh seawater, pumped in each morning and heated to 31 degrees for the comfort of visitors. The Baths provided social facilities, too, and reopened with a celebratory festival in 1871.
French-renaissance architecture
The new building was designed by the respected Manchester firm Horton and Bridgford, who gave it a timelessly elegant classical façade in the same blonde sandstone that covers Southport’s other leading buildings of the period, including the Atkinson Library and Art Gallery, and Cambridge Hall. A French renaissance-style roof completes the external fanfare, whilst inside the best of robust and elegant Victorian engineering allowed beautiful glazed roofs to admit lots of daylight to every part of the building. Elegant iron trusses let roofs span the broad spaces of the pools and were themselves a key architectural feature.
Celebrate the elegance
This is not your average architectural space. Victoria Baths is a building of special interest, achieving Grade II listing in 1976. It is in a fine location for leisure and tourism as is the welcoming face of Southport as visitors arrive in the town from the scenic coastal road. Widely recognised as one of the best of its kind, this beautiful building is a key part of Southport’s past. Its ready to become the heart of Southport’s future. We welcome proposals that complement our wider ambitions for Southport as a leading visitor destination and place to Live Well.
Contact
Address
42-43 Promenade,
Southport,
PR9 0DS