Laburnum Street Party, Haggerston: The street party on Sunday 2nd July 2006 was one of the more enjoyable events I photographed, and was a part of a long-running local campaign to get the Haggerston Baths re-opened.
The baths which have their front entrance on Whiston Street ande back onto Laburnum Street were first opened with great pomp and ceremony in June 2004 by the Mayor of Shoreditch. Hackney Citizen’s 2017 article has a great deal of information on this and all the later developments.
At the time less than one in 20 houses in the area contained a bathroom, and as well as a 30.5 metre swimming pool there were 31 cubicles with baths (first class and second class though I’m at a loss as to the difference) supplied with hot and cold water and a laundry y where people could bring their clothes to wash in a trough before putting them through a mangle before taking them home to dry on a washing line.
The baths, designed in a Wren style by leading pubic baths architect A W S Cross were built with the best materials and designed to last. The insistence on them being built to the highest standards resulted in them costing almost twice the original figure, almost £60,000.
The baths were damaged by bombing in the Second World War but soon reopened and were considerably modernised in 1960 and in the 1980s when the pool was reduced in length to 25 metres.
The building was Grade II listed as “a unique and important part of Hackney’s heritage” in 1988. But the London Borough of Hackney appeared not to appreciate it, and funding cuts for local government under the Tories led to “more than a decade of neglect and poor maintenance by Hackney Council” and in February 2000 the baths were closed “temporarily” for health and safety reasons. They were at that time Hackney’s main swimming pool.
A strong local campaign began for the reopening of the baths, and as a part of this the Haggerston Pool Community Trust held the first Laburnum Street Party was held on 26th June 2004, the 100th anniversary of their opening.
Hackney was short of money to make the repairs partly because of the disastrous Clissold Leisure Centre, begun in 1996 with a budget of £7m. The plans were updated when Sport England became involved to £11.5mm but had increased to £34m when it opened 3 years late in 2002. Less than two years later it was closed on health and safety grounds finally reopening in late 2007 by which time the cost had increased to £45 million.
In 2009 it looked as if the pool was to be refurbished and reopened as a result of the local campaign when the Department for Children, Schools and Families announced a £5m grant towards the cost – which thanks to continued neglect of the building had by then increased hugely from the original £300,000.
But the financial crash led to Hackney abandoning the £21m scheme for turning the pool into a a Health and Wellbeing Centre in 2009. The Haggerston Pool Community Trust continued to look for backers for the restoration but Hackney Council in 2015 “asked developers to come forward with expressions of interest in restoring the building and bringing it back into public use. The winning developer will have to cover the cost of the work and then pay the Council rent for an annual lease.”
“Of those parties who expressed an interest ten developers went on to make formal proposals. Of these, three were shortlisted based on an earlier consultation where residents were asked what facilities and uses they would like to see on the site. One developer pulled out, leaving two proposals.”
Neither of these included a swimming pool and the council site tries to explain why, though I think the answer is simple – it would not make enough money for the developers when they leased it. On the web site of the chosen developer Castleforge you can see an impression of what the baths could look like in 2024. It seems a horrible end to what began as a very impressive municipal investment to improve the lives of local people.
Many more pictures on My London Diary from the 2006 Laburnham Street Party.
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