St George's Leisure Centre including substation, south-east gates and east boundary wall

Summary

A four-storey swimming pool complex constructed 1965-1969 to designs by Slater, Urden and Pike, including the original single-storey substation and gates to the south-east corner of the site, and the east boundary wall.

History

St George’s Leisure Centre occupies a site to the south of the churchyard of St George in the East, which was consecrated in 1729. The site had been partly built up with houses by the time of John Rocque’s map of 1746. Later, rows of small houses were severely damaged in the Second World War and subsequently cleared. The Metropolitan Borough of Stepney saw the site as an opportunity to provide a new swimming pool complex to replace the aging St George’s Baths of 1887 in Betts Street, a short distance to the west. By the time the new St George’s Leisure Centre was constructed between 1965 and 1969, Stepney had been absorbed into the newly-formed London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the arms of which are displayed on the building’s south elevation. The building was designed by the practice Slater, Uren and Pike, possibly with Reginald Uren as lead architect, who developed a reputation for designing pools in the 1960s. It was built to be suitable for competition use and Olympic swimming and diving training, with a 33m sports pool, fixed and sprung diving boards and spectator seating. Many new pools were commissioned in the wake of the 1960 Wolfenden Report ‘Sport and the Community’, which had reported that of 792 public pools in Britain, just two were of Olympic standard. Britain’s first pool of 33.3m (the European standard as opposed to the British Imperial 110 feet) opened at York Hall, London in 1967, and around 100 more were built between then and 1976 when the standard length was reduced to 25m.

The leisure centre appears to have been little altered externally since its original construction, but the interior shows evidence of a 2012 refurbishment. The diving boards have been removed and the tiles to the pools and changing rooms have all been renewed. The leisure centre was in use up until early 2020.

Reginald Uren FRIBA (1906-1988) was born in New Zealand. He arrived in England in to train under Charles Holden in 1930 and became an Associate of the RIBA the following year. In 1936 he joined the partnership of Slater and Moberly, later Slater, Uren and Pike, both practices being responsible for a number of well-respected pieces of commercial and civic architecture. Works by Uren include Hornsey Town Hall of 1935 and Sanderson House (now the Sanderson Hotel) of 1957-60, both listed Grade II* (NHLE: 1263688 and 1248457 respectively). Uren was responsible for the design of a large number of pools for local authorities in the London area, including Hillingdon, Ealing and Brent.

Details

A four-storey, Modernist swimming pool complex constructed 1965-1969 to designs by Slater, Uren and Pike.

MATERIALS: the external elevations are of black engineering brick laid in stretcher bond with alternating horizontal bands of glazing and white mosaic tiles. The roofs are concrete and covered with asphalt.

PLAN: the building is roughly rectangular on plan. The principal, four-storey volume houses the main pool and spectator galleries, with a square stair tower to the north-east corner. To the west is a single-storey laundry, which also houses the plant room. To the east and wrapping around the north elevation are two-storey ranges which house the reception lobby, changing facilities and children’s pool as well as other flexible use rooms and offices.

EXTERIOR: the building presents as four storeys externally, with ancillary ranges of one and two storeys wrapping around the principal building on the west, north and east sides. The principal range has a single-storey podium of black engineering brick laid in stretcher bond supporting three cantilevered upper storeys formed of alternating bands of white mosaic tiles and glazing with metal frames. The concrete shell roof of the principal building has an undulating form in the manner of barrel vaults, which present externally in convex form.

The east flank range is constructed from engineering brick and has a row of ground-floor windows to its south elevation framed by a band of white mosaic tiles, with another tiled band to the parapet. The south elevation also bears the arms of Tower Hamlets, probably of cast aluminium and featuring a shield with a ship, a pair of fire tongs, a sprig of mulberry and a weaver’s shuttle, flanked by a rampant seahorse and a Talbot dog, and an inscription which reads: FROM GREAT THINGS TO GREATER. This range has a flat roof with rows of skylights.

The north range, also of two storeys, has a partly glazed and set back ground floor, including the main entrance to the leisure centre, which appears to have been reconfigured since the original construction. The first floor is formed of a band of glazing sandwiched between two tiled bands and is carried on tiled piloti. This range has a flat, asphalt-covered roof. The west range is also of brick with a flat, asphalt-covered roof and has fenestration and louvred vents framed by white mosaic tiles as elsewhere on the building.

INTERIOR: the reception lobby on the ground floor has a modern suspended ceiling and a tiled floor; this space appears to have been altered considerably since the original construction with the semi-circular desk removed and wall tiles and doors all renewed. The changing rooms and showers on the ground and first floors have also all been re-tiled and have suspended ceilings. The children’s pool is on the ground floor and is lit by rows of windows to the south and east walls. It appears to have been largely re-tiled. The ceiling is formed of heavy, concrete beams.

The original staircase survives with terrazzo treads and white mosaic tiles to the risers. Additional, taller handrails have been added to the outside. Some original mosaic tiles and glazed walls survive within the stairwell. The first floor gym and offices do not retain any features of note.

The main pool is housed in a triple-height volume in the principal four-storey building and is accessed from first-floor level. This volume largely glazed on all four sides and the two upper levels have spectator galleries with seating and metal railings. The third-floor gallery retains the only original piece of signage that survives in the building: it reads GALLERY. Part of the west wall facing the deep end is clad in blue tiles, and a concrete-framed area to the north side indicates the position of the diving boards, which do not survive. The concrete, undulating roof is exposed forming a series of shallow, concave surfaces. The green ventilation tubes hung above and below the galleries are later additions. The tiles to the pool itself have been renewed but the small, mosaic tiles to the galleries and supporting pillars appear to be original. The west range housing the plant room was inaccessible and was not inspected.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: on the east side of the building is a set of gates with piers of black engineering brick and a single-storey, flat roofed electricity substation, also of black engineering brick with a cornice band of white mosaic tiles matching those of the principal building. Extending north from this building, along the east boundary of the site, is a boundary wall of black engineering brick with tiled coping. At the north-east corner of the site this wall meets a taller wall of stock brick. On the north face this is of a different bond and has two shallow buttresses; this would appear to be an historic section of churchyard wall that predates the construction of the leisure centre, but on its south face this wall has been encased in re-used stock brick with cement pointing, which probably dates from the 1960s. Along the north boundary a lower wall continues with re-used stock brick, concrete coping, and modern metal railings and gates. This section is thought to have been completely rebuilt in the 1960s although it follows the line of a pre-existing boundary wall shown on historic maps and possibly utilises re-used stock bricks. On part of the north face of this wall and that of the adjacent laundry range are a number of gravestones repositioned from elsewhere in the churchyard; these are all buried and leant against the wall rather than fixed to it although a few have had brackets embedded in the wall to prevent them from falling over.

Sources

Books and journals
Gordon, I, Inglis, S, Great Lengths: the historic indoor swimming pools of Britain, (2009), 227-239
Hodnett, E, After Hornsey in Building Design, (3 June 1988), 23

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