In 1947 the borough surveyor revealed that 46% of houses in the borough were without a bath and that although 50% of of houses had one bath a good proportion of these properties were shared by several families or individuals renting rooms. The districts containing the largest percentage of houses without baths were St Paul’s, St Peter’s and Fairview.
| Number of houses without baths Number of houses with one bath Number of houses with two baths Number of houses with three baths Number of houses with four or more baths | 7,404 7,968 447 170 101 16,090 |
In 1950 the Health & Holiday Resort Committee twice recommended the conversion of three rooms upstairs which had been used for medical treatments – one of which had previously been a a dressing room and another a store – into wash baths, increasing the total number of baths from nine to twelve. They were expecting the demand for baths at the premises to exceed 20,000 in 1951 having seen attendance at the Alstone Baths jump by almost 4,000 in 1949 to 137,130 (this showing that Alstone was a much larger establishment). The Committee was not wrong as 20,028 baths were taken at Montpellier Baths in 1951 and just shy of 21,000 a year later.
Exactly when these rooms were converted is not clear; they had certainly been done by January 1953 as the Committee were complaining that 11 of the 12 baths still needed updating (having been identified as too large and out-of-date during the War). This means that at least two of the ‘new’ wash baths were anything but and had made use of existing baths from somewhere. In October 1951 all bar three of the medical bath rooms were closed so that only non-water treatments were to be administered. Some of these now-closed rooms contained wash baths – for example, a brine bath was still taken in a ‘normal’ bath – and it was proposed that these rooms could easily be brought into use ‘with some adjustment’ if the slipper baths were busy. It would seem more likely that these wash baths simply moved upstairs in late 1951 or early 1952.
The slipper baths continued in operation until the mid-1970s and in 1976 it was agreed that the Playhouse would take over the space. Four rooms off the main corridor and the four small rooms off the smaller raised corridor were converted to rehearsal spaces while one room (with one below) became a new back stairs and fire escape.
