A history of the Turkish Bath at Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains NSW

MARGIN: Life & Letters in Early Australia, July-August, 2005 by Mary Reynolds

In the small village of Mt Wilson, a rather isolated community in the northern part of the Blue Mountains, with some 70 or 80 permanent residents, the Turkish Bath is tucked into a hill overlooking the rugged World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park and the Wollemi National Park.

It looks down on the Mt Irvine Road which runs between Mt Wilson at over 1,000 metres in altitude and Mt Irvine at 800 metres, both basalt capped with rich volcanic soil producing lush natural rain forest. Many who gazed at this building believed it was a 'chapel' with its eastern like turret. It resonated of the hillside villages in Italian Tuscany with the Church clinging to the hillside. Some who visit it today speak of their first perception of it as a beautiful 'little chapel'.

How did this unusual building, a private Turkish Bath, emerge in Mt Wilson? It is extraordinary that this rare structure is completely ignored in the records of the Mt Wilson community after c. 1920 until c. 1969.

One has to understand a little of the European settlement of Mt Wilson and the interest in Turkish Baths in the 19th century first in England then in Australia in about the 1860s and 1870s to appreciate the presence of this building in 2005.

What was meant by a Turkish Bath in Victorian England? This writer has found invaluable a web site set up by Malcolm Shifrin in the United Kingdom since 1993-2003 which contains an ever increasing body of information on the Turkish Bath. Malcolm comments in his introduction: "If we are to judge by the amount of attention it has received from historians, the once popular institution of the Victorian Turkish Bath might never have existed at all". From a paper delivered on 11th July 2001 to a Conference on London on the 19th Century 'Monuments and Dust' Malcolm defines the term Turkish Bath as a type of bath in which the bather sweats in a room which is heated by dry hot air; the second feature is that bather's progress is through a series of increasingly hot rooms until they sweat profusely. There was much debate at the time about the actual 'correct' temperature for these hot rooms.

"Probably it was the curative, or perhaps the palliative effect of this high temperature which made the Turkish Bath so attractive to hydropathists and to many doctors who had no other means of alleviating pain in rheumatic and gout ridden patients" Malcolm Shifrin concludes.

It is fascinating to learn of the extent and popularity of these baths in the second half of the 19th century in the United Kingdom under the influence of people like David Urquhart, a diplomat and eccentric politician, and his wife Harriet, who set up Foreign Affairs Committees among the working class in which he supported the building of baths especially and encouraged education too for the working class.

What about in Australia? Interest in Turkish baths appears to have developed here after 1850 as in Ireland and England. In 1864 F. Dowling, a resident Surgeon of the Melbourne Hospital wrote on The Turkish Bath Its Use in Health & Disease. In 1868 John Le Gay Brereton MD Sydney gave a lecture on The Turkish Bath in Hobart Town Hall. Both indicated wide use of Turkish Baths in hospitals, demonstrating support from the medical profession. A recent reference is "From the Conservation Analysis & Conservation Policy on the Turkish Bath Mt Wilson, Design 5 Architects March 1996."

Michael Cannon in his historical series 'Life in Cities: Australia in the Victorian Age' describes the increasing attraction of Baths in small and larger cities from Launceston to Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney. Australians perhaps through the experience of climate were keener to bathe. By 1879 there were five baths for gentlemen and two for ladies in Oxford street Sydney. In Melbourne 'The Turkish Bath Palace' in the Royal Arcade was opened by the State Governor in 1873. By this time John Le Gay Brereton had published a book, The Turkish Bath. Private Turkish Baths offered more advanced services for the middle class people who did not want to be with ordinary people. All clients were given a fig leaf to wear and were cautioned against casting it aside while others were present!!

Considering the above it seems even more extraordinary that a Turkish Bath should be constructed in Mt Wilson so far from Sydney [120 km] in c. 1880s.

Mt Wilson was not surveyed until 1868. Like Mt Tomah where the Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens are located it had the benefit of rich volcanic soil, a reliable rainfall and altitude. That it remained unsettled for so long was partly due to the surrounding rugged terrain and that much of the Blue Mountains was not settled until the railway was constructed across the mountains in the late 1860s. The Deputy Surveyor General of N.S.W., Philip Francis Adams visited E.H. Wyndham the Surveyor in 1868 at his camp on the mountain and officially named the mountain, Mt Wilson after John Bowie Wilson, a member of the Legislative Assembly and Secretary for Lands in Sir James Martin's 2nd Ministry in N.S.W. Sixty two lots on Mt Wilson were put up for auction in 1870. But it was not until 1875-1876 that all had been purchased by 33 buyers. The construction of a Mt Wilson Platform about 10 miles [16 km] west of Mt Wilson on the new Great Western Railway Line in 1875, as it wended its way to Lithgow, may well have been significant in attracting interest in Mt Wilson.