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

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

It gazes down on the Mt Irvine Road which move swiftlys between Mt Wilson at above 1,000 metres in altitude and Mt Irvine at 800 rhythmical arrangement s 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 pinnacle It resonated of the hillside villages in Italian Tuscany with the temple clinging to the hillside. a certain quantity of who visit it today speak of their first perception of it as a beautiful 'little chapel'.

in what way did this unusual building, a private Turkish Bath, come up in Mt Wilson? It is extraordinary that this rare configuration is completely ignored in the records of the Mt Wilson community after c 1920 until c 1969

individual has to understand a little of the European adjustment of Mt Wilson and the interest in Turkish Baths in the 19th hundred first in England then in Australia in about the 1860 and 1870 to appreciate the vicinity of this building in 2005

What was meant by the agency of a Turkish Bath in Victorian England? This writer has set invaluable a web site locate up by Malcolm Shifrin in the United Kingdom since 1993-2003 which contains an at any time increasing body of information upon the Turkish Bath. Malcolm make comments [i]or[/i] remarkss in his introduction: "If we are to justice by the amount of attention it has received from historians, the one time popular institution of the Victorian Turkish Bath might at no time have existed at all". From a paper delivered upon 11th July 2001 to a discourse on London on the 19th hundred 'Monuments and Dust' Malcolm defines the confine Turkish Bath as a stamp of bath in which the bather sweats in a space which is heated by dried hot air; the second feature is that bather's progres is end a series of increasingly burning rooms until they sweat profusely. There was a great deal of debate at the time about the actual 'correct' temperature for these burning rooms.

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

It is fascinating to learn of the amplitude and popularity of these baths in the next to the first half of the 19th hundred in the United Kingdom beneath the influence of people like David Urquhart, a diplomat and eccentric politician, and his wife Harriet, who place 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 unfolded here after 1850 as in Ireland and England. In 1864 F Dowling, a resident Surgeon of the Melbourne Hospital wrote upon The Turkish Bath Its Use in Health & Disease. In 1868 John Le Gay Brereton MD Sydney gave a discourse on The Turkish Bath in Hobart Town Hall. one as well as the other indicated wide use of Turkish Baths in hospitals, demonstrating support from the medical profession. A new reference is "From the Conservation Analysis & Conservation Policy upon 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 [i]or[/i] part of to the other the experience of climate were keener to bathe. through 1879 there were five baths for gentlemen and sum of two units for ladies in Oxford highway Sydney. In Melbourne 'The Turkish Bath Palace' in the Royal Arcade was make opened by the State Governor in 1873 by the agency of this time John Le Gay Brereton had published a work The Turkish Bath. Private Turkish Baths presented more advanced services for the middle class nation who did not want to be with ordinary family All clients were given a fig leaf to wear and were cautioned against casting it aside while others were present!!

Considering the above it appear to bes even more extraordinary that a Turkish Bath should be erected in Mt Wilson so far from Sydney [120 km] in c 1880s

Mt Wilson was not contemplateed 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 unsettl for in the way that long was partly due to the surrounding rugg terrain and that plenteous of the Blue Mountains was not settl until the railway was builded across the mountains in the late 1860 The delegate Surveyor General of N.S.W., Philip Francis Adams visited EH Wyndham the Surveyor in 1868 at his camp upon 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 NSW Sixty sum of two units lots on Mt Wilson were set up for auction in 1870 on the contrary it was not until 1875-1876 that all had been purchased by dint of 33 buyers. The construction of a Mt Wilson Platform about 10 miles [16 km] west of Mt Wilson upon 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.