Description: Victoria Baths opened in 1876. Municipal baths were a vital part of urban life in the Victorian period. Elsewhere on this web site you can see the cramped dirty conditions of housing which once filled the streets in this area. The rows of terraces usually had no running water, and people shared a communal standpipe in the yards. Conditions were squalid and disease was rife. Councils realised that public baths, such as the one seen here, would provide a place for recreation as well as improve health and hygiene.