The Mosaic Room
The steam hall under a vault of hand-set verdigris tiles. Ten minutes on the lower bench and you will forgive everyone everything.
Water temperature: 45 °C, humid steam, ten thousand tiles. See when it runs quietest.
Reading the benches
- Lower bench: 38 to 40 °C felt temperature. Conversational. Start here.
- Middle bench: 42 °C. Quiet but sociable. Most people live here.
- Upper bench: 45 °C and serious. The house rule is one turn, then out to the plunge.
- Six minutes a turn is plenty. The clock is a large ceramic face over the door.
The tiles
Two tilemakers of Kesselford set the vault over fourteen months in 1930, working from sketches pinned to the scaffold. Each tile was dipped twice so the green pools darker at the edges, which is why the room reads like water even bone dry. The tide-line bloom the spring leaves behind is scrubbed every third Thursday; the tiles were glazed to forgive exactly this.
The eucalyptus in the steam is a 1960s habit the house kept. Say the word and the steamer will leave it out for a plain, hot, unscented fog.
Sit low, climb slow
Steam turns are timed by the ceramic clock. Book the twilight session and let the fog do the talking.
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.