Water fine restoration job! Opulent Turkish baths in Harrogate are returned to their original 1890s glory in painstaking project
Opulent Turkish baths in the spa town of Harrogate have reopened after a painstaking £300,000 restoration project that restored them to their former glory.
The hammam – part of the Royal Baths in the North Yorkshire town – is still used for its original purpose.
The now-Grade II listed baths were built in 1897 and have welcomed royalty from around the world in the 121 years since.
And now original decorations have been rescued from behind decades of stucco and plasterboard ceilings.
Site manager Chris Mason said the results look ‘amazing’.
‘The interior of our Turkish baths, with its original Victorian opulence and grandeur, is a huge and unique selling point,’ he told the Yorkshire Post.
Bath Attendant Amanda Whalen, 50, at the baths in Harrogate, which are re-opening after a £300,000 restoration project
The baths are now Grade II listed building but had fallen into a state of disrepair down the decades since being built in 1987
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The hammam area will be used for modern spa treatments as well as the more traditional Turkish bath rub-downs
The Royal Baths were completed in 1897 and were graced by royalty from across Europe in their early 20th century heyday
The same building today, nearly 120 years after it first opened and after the £300,000 restoration project recently completed
Original tile work has been freed from behind plasterboard and stucco that masked it for decades in the new renovation
Mrs Whalen in the hammam area, where one-in-four guests request traditional Turkish rub-downs, according to the manager
Massage tables in the newly refurbished North Yorkshire Royal Baths, which welcomes more than 40,000 visitors a year
Even the WCs have an elegance – with one of Mr Crapper’s valveless cisterns proudly on display in the ladies changing rooms
They are now the last authentic survivor of Harrogate’s Victorian Royal Baths complex, which once provided treatments such as peat baths and taking the famous spa waters
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