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]