The sign outside the building centre reads “Slipper Baths”. In the days when private baths were a rarity, slipper baths provided a cubicled opportunity to bathe. The Peterborough baths, on Trinity Street at the rear of the museum, provided 24 separate baths – 18 for males, 6 for females – and charged 6d per bath plus 1d for soap and a further 6d for use of a towel !
In the early 1950s, when this image was captured, the baths reported usage totalling just under 1,000 per week but the numbers plummetted as more and more homes incorporated their own bathrooms. The baths opened in 1935 and closed in the early 1960s.
Thanks to Paul Cyclops who narrowed down the date of this image from the parked car in the foreground, “your shot suggests a date of ‘early fifties’ but the likelihood is early to mid-sixties owing to the presence of an HA series Vauxhall Viva which was produced between 1963-66. It’s almost certainly no later than the sixties as most examples of this budget model had succumbed to tinworm by 1970 !”.
