1. The submission

In 2024, the UK joined many countries in supporting the 2003 Unesco Convention for the Safeguarding of the intangible Cultural Heritage. The Convention looks at cultural heritage, or living heritage, as it's called, which is heritage that is living and practised. Living heritage includes all sorts of activities such as, for example, longsword dancing, carol singing, and boat-building. Some activities cannot be practised without an essential physical environment in which it can take place, for example, church bell-ringing and ten-pin bowling. The convention is particularly concerned with safeguarding the future of such activities so that they do not die out with the loss of all the special skills involved.

The Unesco Convention encourages countries to draw up inventories of such activities taking place in their own country. 2025/26 is the first year the UK is participating and Unesco in the UK is compiling four inventories, one each for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. Towards the end of 2025 they invited "Expressions of Interest" from communities practising such activities, and although individuals were able to submit, it became clear that the individual would need support from the practising community or communities.

I only accidentally became aware of any of this towards the middle of February, days before the closing date for expressions of interest. But having written and maintained this website for over a quarter of a century, watching the steady closure of Victorian and Victorian-style Turkish baths exemplifying, if anything did, a cultural and social activity that was clearly under threat of disappearance, I decided, without much thought, to rush-compile an expression of interest before it was too late to be included in the first year's submissions. I was also encouraged by the inclusion of Finnish sauna in the inventory of Finland.

Given the history of the Victorian Turkish bath I would have preferred to have been able to include Ireland as well as the four nations making up the UK. But since the specification was rigidly limited (and, I think, correctly so) to living practices, I regretfully had to limit it to Scotland and England. Hastily and clumsily written though it was, approval was received on 23 February, and I then I realised what lay ahead. I had acted on my own, without consultation with any specific "community" and as I read the instructions and guidance notes for completing the full Submission Form, and the closing date of 27 March, I wondered how I would manage. Mercifully, the closing date was extended to 10 April.

I immediately wrote a letter explaining what the Unesco project was about, and asking if the recipient would upload one of Unesco in the UK's simple online forms of support for the submission. I sent this to Victorian Turkish baths which were still open to members of the public, to the independent clubs which provided them, to local authorities which provided them, to groups like the Friends of baths such as Carlisle, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Swindon, and Manchester, and to a number of individuals not directly connected to Victorian Turkish baths but very knowledgeable about them, including historians, archivists, a film director, and an archaeologist.

Particularly supportive was Mikkel Aaland, maven of hot-air-bathing, who alerted the British Sauna Society, many of whose members sent support seeing the Victorian Turkish bath as a predecessor which effectively made the UK sauna-ready. Carl Evans, founder of the Baths and Washhouses Historical Archive suggested other individuals who then also sent forms of support, as did Clare Short of Historic Pools of Britain. Ian Miller, the archaeologist who uncovered the remains of William Potter's second Turkish bath in Manchester, and Mark Bass, President of British Naturism both sent comprehensive support forms written about different aspects of the bath. Şule Nişancıoğlu, director of the film My beautiful Turkish baths about the (eventually successful) campaign to re-open Carlisle Turkish Baths, allowed her film to be accessed through the bibliography in the support document. And I am specially grateful to Will Jess of the Arlington Baths Club who agreed to be my co-sponsor. Finally, at the last moment when I realised I had no copyright-cleared image to accompany the submission, I was allowed to use the wonderfully appropriate painting of women relaxing after the bath, Arlington Baths: Turkish Suite, 2001, by the artist Lesley Banks, who painted it in 2001. Finally, my daughter, amongst her many improvements to my submission, suggested the key phrase that 'Social bathing is practised in Victorian Turkish baths by a community that has grown round each establishment."

I could now clearly see that we had community support for the submission.

2. The result
 

It seems there have been over 600 submissions, we are told, so it may be four  to six months before we know whether we have been successful.
Watch this space!

This page first published 14 April 2026