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Hammam, or Turkish Baths
Sometime around 1867, Dr Richard Barter ceased to
have any connection with the Turkish Bath Company of Dublin Ltd and with
the Lincoln Place Turkish Baths he had built for them. The exact reason
for his departure may never be known but the proposed introduction of
moisture into the hot rooms may have been the main issue.
He immediately decided to open a new Turkish bath
in Dublin—one which could be seen still to follow the principles which
had governed the design of all his establishments. He set about looking
for a suitable site and on 17 June 1868 advertised his requirements.
Wanted immediately to lease or purchase a
suitable site in a central part of the city, the north preferred, for
the erection of a first class Turkish Bath; a good residence would be
desirable.
The advertisements must have brought a quick
response because the new baths were open to the public barely nine
months later.
So on 17 March 1869,
Dr Barter opened his second Turkish bath in
Dublin. It was built as an extension at the rear of a
typically Georgian building, then known as Reynold's
Hotel, situated at numbers 11 and 12 Upper Sackville
Street, and now known as Upper O'Connell Street.
The baths were built behind the hotel
which had thirty bedrooms. These, and the public rooms, were
refurbished and the establishment renamed the Hammam Family
Hotel and Turkish Baths.
The dressing and cooling-rooms were at the end of a
galleried entrance hall. These led to four separate suites of
Turkish baths, two large ones for men, one for women, and a
private suite which could be made available for men or women.
There were also private rooms with hot, tepid, and cold water
baths.
As bathers passed from one hot room to another they were able to
experience temperatures ranging from 120ºF
to 230ºF.
The rooms were heated by a type of underfloor hypocaust and
bathers were provided with cork-soled slippers to ensure that
they did not burn their feet on the floors.
The fittings and furniture were said to be both costly and
luxurious, with the ladies’ apartment being ‘even
more sumptuously furnished and decorated than that of the
gentlemen’s ’. During the day the rooms were ventilated and lit
by frosted or stained glass windows and skylights; by night the
painted lamps and gasoliers produced lighting which was ‘most
brilliant and effective’.
Unlike the baths at St Anne’s,
which were part of a hydropathic establishment, the hotel baths
included a comfortably furnished ‘waiting
or smoking room for gentlemen’.
An arched corridor, led to the men’s
baths, with ‘appropriate
inscriptions, inculcating the excellence and importance of
thorough cleanliness’
painted in ornamental letters on each arch, and lit at night,
like the other rooms, by coloured lamps and a double row of gas
jets.
But there were, adjoining the baths, separate coffee-rooms for
men and women, with an ice-cream soda water apparatus which
produced ‘eight
different kinds of delicious drinks, to cool and refresh the
bather’.
The Hammam never reopened after it was
destroyed in 1922
during the civil war, but the new building which stands on the
site today is named Hammam Buildings.
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Eithne
Massey,
Dublin and Irish Local Studies Collections, Dublin
City Public Libraries
Tash Shifrin |
The original page
includes footnotes,
and thumbnail pictures which can be enlarged.
All the enlarged images, listed and linked below, can also be printed.
The
Hammam Family Hotel and Turkish Baths
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