M y sister and I are lying on slabs like flounders in a fishmonger’s. Instead of a bed of ice, though, we’re stretched out on heated marble. We move between three hot rooms, each resembling little chapels with vaulted ceilings, chatting quietly in the cooler one, applying face and hair masks in the middle one, and simply lying still, sweating, in the hottest one.
Later, we will be scrubbed and massaged. In between, we cool off under a rain-mist shower, or retire to a bed in our own private mahogany-panelled booth beneath a glazed dome. The Guardian’s journalism is independent.
We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. It sounds like a luxury spa, with prices to match.
In fact, we’re at a century-old public bathhouse. The City Baths in Newcastle reopened in April after an £8m restoration – and a decade-long campaign. A two‐hour Turkish bath session here costs about £20, which includes a swim in the pool upstairs.
The City Baths is one of the UK’s few surviving Victorian or Victorian-style Turkish baths. It was built in 1927 on the site of an even older bathhouse, the Northumberland Baths, which opened in 1859. Despite being Grade II-listed in 1992, classed as of high architectural significance in 2012, and being well used and loved by the people of Newcastle, the city council closed it in 2013.
The closure was a familiar story. There were once more than 600 Turkish baths in Britain and Ireland. The movement was spearh.