Turkish delight was height of luxury

With its indulgent treatments and opulent surroundings, James's Turkish Baths was the place to be for the well-heeled of Wolverhampton in the late 1800s.

The Albany Road sanctuary, which offered Turkish, electric and radiant heat baths, was opened by Archibald Reynolds James in 1888. The city's famous Mander family also had a luxurious private bath built at Wightwick Manor in 1887, as did prominent industrialist Lt Col Thomas Thorneycroft, the son of Wolverhampton's first mayor, at his family home of Tettenhall Towers in 1879.

Turkish baths boomed in Victorian times, with patrons first being taken into a steam-free warm room before being moved into an even hotter area.

They were then splashed with cold water and given a thorough wash before retiring to a relaxing cooling room.

James's opened daily 9am-7.30pm and treatments ranged in price from 2/6 to 4/-.

The centre also claimed to cure nerve complaints and, in 1899, its staff even professed to have healed 37 out of 41 cases of lead poisoning.

A black and white photograph, supplied by Wolverhampton historian Graham Hughes, shows the ladies' cooling room.

An advert entices with a view of the comfortable couches draped in the finest white linen, curtained-off cubicles and exotic pot plants.

Mr Hughes said: "The advert really is stunning and the room looks very inviting.

"It would be wonderful to still have something like this in Wolverhampton today." In 1901, the spa extended its opening hours to 10pm to cater to even more customers.

The building remained as James's until 1914 when it reopened as Wolverhampton Turkish Baths Co Ltd.

The building stopped operating as a baths in the 1930s and was lost in 1966 during the construction of the ring road.

The three-room, ground-floor bath suite at Wightwick Manor was included in architect Edward Ould's original 1887 plan.

The suite is thought to be one of only two in the country to have survived in privately-built country houses.

The other is Lord Armstrong's home in Northumberland.

Wightwick's bath is made up of three interlinking rooms, two for heat and one for cooling.

The middle room acted as a shampooing room, which was used for massaging rather than washing.