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Public Health & The Built Environment

On the 23rd August 2017, as part of our Centenary Celebrations of the opening of the Baths in 1917, we held a Conference on Public Health & The Built Environment. Invited speakers spoke about the reasons why public baths & wash-houses were developed in the UK, including the cholera pandemic in the 1800’s.

The purpose of the conference was to bring together a diverse audience and set of speakers to consider: the context in which Govanhill Baths was built; the importance of municipal swimming baths & wash houses; their impact on public health and amateur swimming in Scotland; their architectural importance and what all this means today as Govanhill Baths is redeveloped into a community led Health and Wellbeing Centre. Speakers came from Glasgow, Aberdeen, Manchester and Stoke on Trent. They brought with them a wide variety of knowledge and skills from architecture, conservation and public health to historical archives and amateur swimming. With representatives from the academic, archives, museum, heritage and voluntary sectors .

You can watch all the presentations and Q&A’s on the Govanhill Baths Youtube channel by following the links below.
Enjoy!!

Conference Schedule & links to video documentation.

Click to view full playlist on YouTube

10.00 Registration and refreshments
10.20 Introduction & Welcome

Niall Murphy (Govanhill Baths Community Trust & Glasgow City Heritage Trust)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

10.35 Govanhill, Glasgow in the 1910’s – 1920’s

Isobel McDonald (Glasgow Museums)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

10.50 Cataloguing Glasgow’s Public Health Records

Alison Scott (Glasgow City Archives)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

11.05 Glasgow’s Public health in the time of War

Simon Walker (Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

11.35 Q&A / 11.45 Refreshment break
12.00 Scottish baths 1868-1914 : and their conservation

Douglas Campbell (Aberdeen City Heritage Trust)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

12.30 Sharing Memories of Baths and Wash Houses

Carl Evans (Baths and Wash Houses Historical Archive)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

13.00 Q&A / 13.10 Networking lunch
14.00 Victoria Baths & Historic Pools of Britain

Gill Wright (Victoria Baths, Manchester and Historic Pools of Britain)
Click to view presentation on YouTube

14.30 Learning to Swim in Govanhill & Amateur Swimming in Scotland

Paul Donald (Scottish Swimming and Kingston Amateur Swimming Club)

15.00 Q&A and closing remarks

Paula Larkin (Govanhill Baths Archive)
Click to view presentation on YouTube