This image clearly shows the octagonal roof of the hot room at the baths as it is today (2018). There roofing of other areas of the bath are probably also visible but as it is not yet known how much of the building remains it is difficult to signpost them.
The baths were at the back of the Balmoral Hotel in Rose Street Lane, being reached by a long passage from Princes Street. There was also, at some stage, and entrance or, at least an exit, opening on Rose Street Lane.
The cut here shows the inside of the hot room with its central raised platform and several smaller ones round the outside of the room for bathers to recline on. Glass doors and a central glass screen divided it from the cooling-room with the plunge pool straddling the two rooms allowing bathers to swim underwater below the dividing screen. Above is the octagonal lantern seen in the aerial photograph.
This image comes from a leaflet issued by the proprietor, A H Allshorn, about 18 months after the bath's opening on 1 July 1861.
The photo on the left shows the bricked-up entrance to the baths in Rose Street Lane. Above the doorway, and the wall above it, can be seen the top of the hot room lantern.
Part of this can also be seen in the photo on the right, behind the modern box-like construction. The hot room would have been fairly close to the rear wall with the cooling-room and most of the plunge pool just behind it. The glass roof over this seems to have been covered up.
Jean Leith, a descendant of Alexander Hardie, for images of the rate card & photos
David Mitchell for information of the continued existence of the building
© Malcolm Shifrin, 1991-2023