THE PEERLESS POOL
The Peerless Pool should, in strictness, be described in a history of sports and pastimes, but as a pleasant summer resort, an oasis in the regions of Old Street and the City Road, it must be allowed a place in the present volume.
In ground immediately behind St. Luke’s Hospital (built 1782–84), Old Street, was one of the ancient London springs which had formed, by its overflowings, a dangerous pond, referred to,[79] as early as 1598, as the “clear water called Perillous Pond, because divers youths by swimming therein have been drowned.”
In the seventeenth century it was apparently resorted to for the favourite amusement of duck-hunting: “Push, let your boy lead his water spaniel along, and we’ll show you the bravest sport at Parlous Pond” (Middleton’s Roaring Girl, 1611).
In 1743, William Kemp, a London jeweller, who had derived benefit from his plunges in its water, took the Parlous Pond in hand. He embanked it, raised the bottom, changed its name to Peerless Pool, and opened it to subscribers as a pleasure bath. In the adjacent ground, of which he held the lease, he introduced other attractions: in particular he constructed a fish-pond, 320 feet long, 90 feet broad, and 11 feet deep, and stocked it with carp, tench, and other fish. The high banks of this were thickly covered with shrubs, and on the top were walks shaded by lime trees. To the east of the fish-pond was a Cold Bath (distinct from the Pool) 36 feet long and 18 feet broad,[80] supplied by a spring. The Peerless Pool itself as contrived by Kemp was an open-air swimming-bath, 170 feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. It was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool came bubbling up. The entrance was from a bowling-green on the south side, through a marble saloon (30 feet long) which contained a small collection of light literature for the benefit of subscribers to the Pool. Adjoining this were the dressing boxes.
The place became, from about the middle of the eighteenth century, a favourite resort of London anglers and swimmers, and many London merchants and persons of good position were among the subscribers. An annual payment of one guinea entitled subscribers to the use of the baths, and to the diversion of “angling and skating at proper seasons.” Occasional visitors paid two shillings each time of bathing.
THE PLEASURE BATH, PEERLESS POOL, CITY ROAD.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.
PLEASURE BATH
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Month | 0 | 9 | 0 |
| Two Months | 0 | 16 | 0 |
| Year | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Single Bathe with Towels and Box | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Ditto without | 0 | 0 | 0 |
COLD BATH
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Month | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Two Months | 0 | 17 | 0 |
| Year | 1 | 10 | 0 |
| Single Bathe | 0 | 1 | 0 |
THE PLEASURE BATH OF PEERLESS POOL,
The largest in England, is situated in the immediate neighbourhood of the heart of the City, within Ten minutes’ direct walk of the Bank and Exchange. (vide plan.) Surrounded by trees and shrubberies, open to the air, although entirely screened from observation, and most ample in its dimensions—170 FEET in length, by 108 in breadth—it offers to the Bather the very advantages he would least expect to find at so short a distance from the centre of the metropolis. Its depth, which increases gradually from 3 feet 6 inches to 4 feet 8 inches, is such as to afford free scope to the Swimmer, while it precludes all fear of accident to any, and the temperature of the water rises to a height sufficient to ensure all the comfort and luxury of Bathing, without the risk of injury to health, from a too violent contrast with the external air.
THE COLD BATH,
Thirty-Six feet by Eighteen, is the largest of its kind in London, and both Baths are entirely supplied by Springs, which are constantly overflowing.
The City Road is the line from all parts of the West End to the City. Omnibuses pass both ways nearly every minute throughout the day.
1, Bath Buildings Entrance—2, Baldwyn Street Entrance—3, Cold Bath—4, Pleasure Bath—5, Dressing Boxes—6, Shrubberies.
BILL OF PEERLESS POOL. Circ. 1846.
About 1805 Mr. Joseph Watts (father of Thomas Watts, the well-known Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum) obtained a lease of the place from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at a rental of £600 per annum, and eventually saw his way to a profit by building on part of the ground. He drained the fish-pond which lay due east and west, and built the present Baldwin Street on the site. The old-fashioned house inhabited by Kemp, which stood in a garden and orchard of apple and pear trees overlooking the west end of the fish-pond, Watts pulled down, erecting Bath Buildings on the spot.[81] The pleasure bath and the cold bath he, however, continued to open to the public at a charge of one shilling, and Hone gives a pleasant description of it as it was (still in Watts’s proprietorship) in 1826. “Its size,” he says, “is the same as in Kemp’s time, and trees enough remain to shade the visitor from the heat of the sun while on the brink.” “On a summer evening it is amusing to survey the conduct of the bathers; some boldly dive, others ‘timorous stand,’ and then descend, step by step, ‘unwilling and slow’; choice swimmers attract attention by divings and somersets, and the whole sheet of water sometimes rings with merriment. Every fine Thursday and Saturday afternoon in the summer, columns of blue-coat boys, more than three score in each, headed by their respective beadles, arrive, and some half strip themselves ere they reach their destination; the rapid plunges they make into the Pool, and their hilarity in the bath, testify their enjoyment of the tepid fluid.”
The Pool was still frequented in 1850,[82] but at a later time was built over. Its name is kept locally in remembrance by Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road, just beyond Old Street, in coming from the City. This street was formerly called Peerless Row, and formed the northern boundary of the ground laid out by Kemp.[83]
[Maitland’s Hist. of London, i. p. 84, ff.; Dodsley’s London, “Peerless Pool”; Noorthouck’s London, p. 756, ff.; Trusler’s London Adviser (1786), p. 124; Hone’s Every Day Book, i. p. 970, ff.; Pennant’s London, p. 268; Wheatley’s London P. and P. iii. s.v.; newspaper cuttings, &c., W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. Two woodcuts (pleasure bath and fish-pond) from drawings, circ. 1826, by John Cleghorn in Hone’s Every Day Book (cited above).
2. View of Peerless Pool Bath and Gardens in 1848; coloured drawing by Read. Crace, Cat., p. 608, No. 9.
3. The Pleasure Bath, Peerless Pool. An advertisement bill with woodcut of the bath, surrounded by trees and shrubberies, and a plan of the vicinity (1846?), W. Coll.; cp. Crace, Cat., p. 608, No. 8.