Nearly one hundred and twety-five years ago, the local authority – then St Pancras – poured money into a state-of-the-art public facility for the residents of Kentish Town. Comprising of a wash house, public hall and baths, the deep red brick and terracotta edifice was a sight to behold, but one that withered in its visual and social impact as the decades rolled by.
Opened in 1901, Prince of Wales Baths, reborn in the last decade as the rather more utilitarian ‘Kentish Town Sports Centre’, was an instant hit. A grand Victorian project that served the very mixed community in the more rigid style of the time. Hence separate bathing areas for men and women, and entrance via a class system (second class men didn’t get such prestigious stonework saints above their door. Or a towel and soap.)

In the wash house, women went about mangling the family smalls. 129 cubicles featured personal ‘slipper baths’ and, as well as the regular community events in the hall, boards were put over the baths during winter so that huge dances or boxing matches could be held.
Donate just £2 to Kentishtowner
But of course, society’s wants and needs were on the move, and buildings so gloriously stiff in their provision of ablutions, courtship opportunities and teeth crunching spectator sports were to struggle to stay relevant and swerve the wrecking ball.

The inevitable ruthless modernisations took place, including brilliant-at-the-time ideas such as covering the beautiful glass roofs with false ceilings and shoving on a grey corrugated side entrance in the classical 1970s style sported on the also soon to be removed Kings Cross Station folly.
The stinking, dark changing rooms and broken tiles of a certain generation’s childhood memories continued the general slide until the mid-90s when demolition was all but a certainty. Yet, the unpredictable twists and turns of local politics instead saw sign-off for a complicated restoration in the early 2010s.
Reconstruction was serious business. 700 new pieces of terracotta had to be approved by the Victorian Society and English Heritage before they were put in place, 5.5 miles of scaffolding went up in the Willes Pool area alone to uncover the fantastic glass roof (one of 9!) once more.
Donate just £2 to Kentishtowner
A thriving local facility once more, there are few places so bold for feeling the connection between the Kentish Town of Victorian times and today. Plus there’s some really great swimming and fitness to be enjoyed, bathed in natural light too – lest we forget. Tom Kihl
Inspiration to local artists
As you can see above, over the decades the baths have inspired artists, including tragic Galway painter Danny Carmody, whose work is pictured above (a story we covered here), and whose life was depicted in the 2018 play Tragic Carmody.
The building also excites Tufnell Park-based architectural portraitist Liz Matthews. “Just down the road from our house is this effervescent building overflowing with joie de vivre – the public baths at Kentish Town (by TW Aldwinckle 1898), described by Pevsner as ‘especially festive’ and full of ‘fun and games’,” she said in 2022 before a show at Burgh House. “I have a particular passion for the combination of architecture and text, a lettered façade, and Kentish Town bath-house is labelled in gold Art Deco lettering with its name and function, but also – above the doors, helpfully with the designations: ‘Men’s Second Class’, and (poshest central door) ‘Men’s First Class’.
The other doors to the right that you might expect to be for women (perhaps of first, second and third class) are labelled ‘Public Hall’. I’ve chosen, somewhat perversely, to make the portrait of this particularly terracotta palace of pleasure on handmade paper rather than in clay partly because of this text, but also because I love a challenge, and I wanted to see if I could capture something of its intriguing façade-articulation and sparkling chiaroscuro in two dimensions, just with a coloured pencil and some modelling, and without the aid of clay. It’s the kind of building that one can pass every day in London, and it never fails to raise a smile.”
Words by Tom Kihl and Stephen Emms