Name: Health Hydro Location: Swindon Current status: Closed Date built: 1891 Architect: JJ Smith Listed building status: Grade II* Lead organisation: Swindon Borough Council
Description
Built by the Great Western Railway Medical Fund Society, the Health Hydro (as it is now known) sought to provide affordable access to both preventative and medical care. It was funded by subscriptions from GWR employees, who recognised that good health is not just the absence of disease but a process influenced by hygiene, diet, environment, physical activity, and community support. The provision of wash baths, swimming baths, and Turkish Baths alongside a comprehensive medical service in one building, sought to put into practice Swindon’s motto: ‘Salubritas Et Industria’ (Health and Industry).
The impressive Queen Anne style building extends over a whole block. Its materials (metal roof trusses, red bricks, external and internal joinery etc) were produced almost entirely from within the GWR Works.
Facilities
Two Victorian swimming pools, the oldest continually operating Victorian-style Turkish Baths alongside a complete (and pioneering) medical service with consulting rooms for doctors and dentists, ophthalmology, chiropody, psychology and physiotherapy, a dispensary, and an x-ray room.
Notable facts
The longest continually operating Victorian-style Turkish Baths in the UK with exposed timber roof structure and glazed brickwork walls including moulded cornice, dado and skirtings and a terrazzo floor.
As perhaps the earliest experiment in socialised health care the Health Hydro inspired the architects of the NHS who visited Swindon after World War II.
Current plans
The first phase of plans is currently underway to restore not only the Victorian splendour of the Health Hydro, but the vision for the building is “to give a contemporary expression to its original ethos and intent.”
