The Future for Haggerston Baths : public meeting Thursday 8th October at 7pm

The Save Haggerston Pool campaign has called a public meeting and invited Council representatives to outline the "expressions of interest" which they have received from potential bidders for a 250 year lease of the Grade II Listed building.

The meeting is on Thursday 8th October at 7pm in the VLC Centre, Whiston Road E2 8BN, next door to Haggerston Baths. The proposals received will be on display to view from 6pm.

The meeting will be chaired by the Campaign and is the first opportunity for the public to question and debate the future of the Baths, with Hackney's Assistant Director of Property Services and its Cabinet Member for Health and Community Services, since the Council announced its intention to invite offers for Haggerston Baths last June.

The Baths have been closed for 15 years and the Victorian Society has warned that the building is seriously "at risk". We have reported on the plight of the Baths here. You can read the Save Haggerston Pool campaign's website here. You can see recent photos of the interior of  the Baths on Spitalfields Life here

You can also read about a recent visit to the Haggerston Baths by Iain Sinclair here

"It’s like breaking into an Egyptian tomb, labyrinthine corridors insinuate in every direction, stairs snake towards unfamiliar offices and storage spaces, into sinister chambers where utilitarian grey tubs, the remnants of the second-class female baths, look more suited to archive footage of cold-hosed lunatics. The swimming pool is drained and the three churchy windows towards which I used to swim, as through a flooded cathedral, in my laboured choppy crawl, before breaststroking back again, were covered over. The natural light that used to flood the high-ceilinged hangar is excluded, in favour of sanctioned entropy. Haggerston Baths is another of those decommissioned non-places kept in a persistent vegetative state, like the Gothic mass of the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney Road, until the right development package comes along. And meanwhile spiders knit their spectral nets. Shivering phantoms stand before empty mirrors in white-tiled washrooms where the taps leak coal dust."
"Swimming on the 52nd Floor" Iain Sinclair, London review of Books