A century of steam on the Slatebeck
Ottilie Marsh bought the river terrace in 1925 with money from a shipping fortune she rarely mentioned, and cut the pool hall into the hillside the following spring. The house has been warm ever since.
The terrace
Ottilie Marsh buys the watermeadow below the Marrow spring. The hillside has steamed on cold mornings for as long as anyone remembers; she decides that is not a mood, it is a business.
First water
The pool hall opens with the Meridian Pool, dressed stone from the same hillside, and a single boiler the size of a small barn. The first winter is famously cold in the corridors and famously warm in the water.
Green tiles, cooler pools
Two tilemakers of Kesselford set the Mosaic Room vault over fourteen months. In 1931 the cascade is engineered to cool the spring to swimming temperature, ending the era of the pool as a very firm soup.
The house rituals fixed
The order of rooms is written into the house manual: heat, swim, steam, cold, rest. It has not changed since. The 1954 edition calls the Resting Hall "the room where the water is kept".
The ward years
The Navy requisitions the hall as a convalescent ward and leaves the tiles untouched. Regulars returning in 1946 report that the plunge has lost none of its opinion.
Salt from the yard
The drying yard begins making the coarse salt liniment still used in the Birch & Salt ritual. The recipe is written on the yard door and has never been written anywhere else.
The restoration
After two drowned boilers and a winter of closed doors, the Marsh family restores the hall rather than sells it. The brass lane markers are re-polished, the slow clock is corrected by mistake and then re-slowed on purpose.
The house keeps itself
Still family-run, still fed by the Marrow, still 6 °C in the plunge. The centenary board by the west steps lists every hundred-length swimmer since the custom began in 1952; there is room for four more names this year.
Read the journal
The Bath Journal carries longer notes from the house: the 1939 ward years, the clock, the tide-line scrub.
The Pools
Cascade, Meridian, Mosaic, Plunge, Resting. In that order.
41 °CThe Water
One spring, honestly described, never sweetened.
Since 1926History
Ottilie Marsh, the ward years, the slow clock.
8 ritualsTreatments
Hands, heat, salt and birch, priced plainly.
ArchiveThe Journal
Longer notes from the stairwell cabinet.
VisitPlan a Visit
Trains, towpaths, punts and what to bring.