Kentish Town Sports Centre

2 Comments by Laura Whiting on 30th Jul 10

Swimming is often a blurry experience for me, as minus glasses or contact lenses it can be disorientating. But as I lap up and down the large Willes pool at the newly re opened Kentish Town Sports Centre; I actually understand the volumes of hall more clearly. When doing backstroke the clouds float by through the restored glazed hammerbeam roof, and although the viewing gallery is empty today, I still feel cheered on by a crowd of invisible spectators.

Next to me two men discuss how the pool was in its final days of disrepair, with drafty holes in the roof that sometimes let the pigeons in. Another woman asks after her favourite staff members to the swimming attendant, explaining that after coming to the pool every day for so many years – you get to know the staff. It is this kind of peculiar habitation that you only really get with local swimming pools, and possibly public libraries – where a regular core of punters treat the place as an extension of their homes.

The Prince of Wales Baths, as they were known to locals, were design by T.W. Aldwinckle and first opened in 1901. Daily activities then were more utilitarian – as laundry and slipper baths to the local neighbourhood. Washer women would bring the dirty laundry down from the houses in Hampstead, and like the Kings Hall Baths in Hackney, in the winter the largest of the pool hall would be boarded over, and used as a meeting place, theatre or for boxing matches. Richard Osley’s excellent interview with local resident, and architect Peter Peneth in the Camden New Journal this week further documents the rough everydayness.

Outside it’s good today to see the restored gilded lettering of the Prince of Wales Road entrances, proudly declaring Men’s First Class, Men’s Second Class and Public Hall, as whilst it exposes the segregation of the time, it also honestly acknowledges the difference in the standard of living. By being so un-coded about something that is much skirted in contemporary conversation, makes it more up front, as nowadays politicians wince at the mention of the word – class.

The letters signpost grand front doors which are now to private apartments on the upper stories (the spare space sold to private development to fund the refurbishment) the statues that surround the doorways are nonetheless gracious and dramatic.

What I also like is how the different bathhouse buildings are not homogenized, but instead huddle in a crescent shaped cluster; handsome tall town houses to the main street façade, and a jaunty assortment of gables along Grafton Road, all unified by the red and white striped brickwork. Even the ‘back of house’ elevations on tree lined Willes Road carve an interesting rotundly shaped street.

And so for the renovation job its self. Under the direction of Roberts Limbrick Architects and Max Fordham Engineers the interior has been reconfigured and retiled throughout in a safely neutral scheme, with ample well laid out changing spaces that modernise the Kentish Town Sports Centre for its various visitors. The Willes pool, learner pool and the fitness gym’s roof lights have been replaced, and as mentioned, the restored roof to the Willes pool (former first class men’s pool) is particularly impressive because of its bold proportions.

The current renovation integrates an ingenious service strategy, with uses original 140m deep boreholes to draw up water that maintains a constant temperature for the supply to the pools, as well as assisting with the heating of the pools, and cooling of the fitness gym, with a more technical explanation to be found here in this weeks Building Design.

Leaving the baths I hang around for a while to take some photos and watch the swimmers come and go. After only a few days of opening the Kentish Town Sport Centre is back in the swing of things, and reclaiming its place in the street as a temple of the everyday.