UKAA buy and sell original Victorian cast iron enamel baths, we have sold many styles over the years which include roll top, slipper or hip baths, single slipper baths, double ended roll top baths, canopy shower baths, bateau and boat baths, copper baths, zinc bateau baths and children’s cast iron roll top baths. In the Victorian era personal hygiene was not practised like it is today, people tended to wash hands arms and faces but other parts of their bodies were neglected. With most poor and working class homes not having washing facilities or running water this was the norm. The Upper class and more well to do homes would have had primitive internal plumbing and fancy decorative wash stands, they would have been situated in the bedrooms as they did not have a dedicated room which we now call a bathroom like we have today. Around the mid nineteenth century public bath or wash houses as they were known were open and were frequently used so that people could bathe themselves and do their laundry. Working class people would take their bundle of clean clothes to the bath house, bathe and wash their dirty clothes. They would come out of the bath house wearing clean clothes smelling and looking a lot better than they went in. The most popular bath in the upper class homes were the roll top. The most popular style was a single ended roll top with tap holes at the one end of the bath. They could be anything between five and eight feet in length either parallel sided or tapered in shape. The larger ones could have shower attachments and were known as plunger or canopy baths. Original roll top double ended baths with the taps positioned in the centre were French in origin as are roll top slipper baths, French style baths tend not to have legs (or feet) but sit directly on the floor. Slipper baths whilst they vary in length, are smaller than other roll top baths and are more upright and are often called hip baths. The double ended roll top baths are easily distinguishable as they do not have tap holes. The plumbing would be free standing outside of the bath. The most stylish baths were the roll top bateau and boat baths. The first examples of these were developed by Jacob Delafon of Paris. The original baths sell for thousands of pounds and are as popular now as when they were first developed between 1850 -1900. The actual roll top edge could be anything between four and seven inches wide and all old baths of whatever style were made of cast iron and vitreous enamelled at a temperature of more than 800 degrees centigrade. The baths we reclaim today are still in pretty good condition after more than 100 years of use showing the quality and the craftsmanship of the Victorian era. The vast majority of the population however did not have bathrooms of any description and those who lived out of town did not have access to bath houses so the tin bath was put in front of the fire or range usually in the kitchen. The first to use the water would be the head of the house, followed in a strict hierarchical order according to gender (males first) and age, (babies last). In a large Victorian working family there would be many baths taken in the same water by varyingly dirty people before the close of the session. By this time the water became pretty dirty and the warning ‘not to throw the baby out with the bath water‘ comes from the notion that this water was so dirty and mucky that a small child could be thrown out with the water and never seen again. Antique single ended roll top bath Reclaimed slipper bath as known as hip bath Original canopy shower bath Reclaimed bateau bath sometimes know as a boat bath Antique copper bath Original reclaimed zinc bateau bath Reclaimed children's roll top cast iron bath Click Here To View Our Original Antique Baths We Have For Sale Click Here To View Our New Cast Iron Baths We Have For Sale