The site of a former social hub left vacant for decades will be revived for the local community as part of a "housing revolution", according to council plans.
Opened in 1878, Lodge Lane Public Baths and Wash House, in Toxteth, was the seventh such facility opened across Liverpool as part of public health programme in the second half of the 19th century. They were inspired by Kitty Wilkinson, an Irish migrant who saved lives during an 1832 cholera outbreak by allowing neighbours to wash their clothes in her kitchen, the only one in her area with a boiler.
Built to improve sanitation for poor people living in the crowded conditions of Victorian Liverpool, the baths on Lodge Lane became a vital community asset where people learnt to swim, played sport and even watched films. There were "people with big tubs mashing their clothes up and down and using mangles to dry them out", as local MP Kim Johnson put it.
