Haggerston Baths is sinking into ruin — and locals fear it won't be saved

Liz Hughes liked to go early, gliding above the white-tiled lanes before work. Haggerston Baths was serene, but it could be lively, too; a place where frenetic children learned to swim backstroke and bathroomless Hackney old boys could slip in for a soak. “It was just a beautiful pool,” she reminisces. 

Today, the cherished community bath house is derelict, and has been for 25 years. A private equity firm called Castleforge was awarded redevelopment rights back in 2017, the old blog posts on their website still teasing that the rebuild should have been completed last year. “Now it’s just sat there”, said Liz, the building untouched and slowly falling apart. “It’s insane.”

The past February marked a quarter of a century since Liz, who is softly spoken and silver haired, last swam at Haggerston Baths. With no prior warning, on the morning of Friday 11 February 2000, she and the other regulars arrived to find a notice of temporary closure affixed to padlocked gates — an issue, they were told, of health and safety. They formed the Haggerston Pool Community Action Group almost immediately.

Weeks of fervent campaigning soon gave way to years, the impassioned annual Save Haggerston Pool festival only chronicling the building’s decay. By the time Hackney Council invited commercial developers to redevelop the property, it was 2015. 

More than 160 locals poured into the 2015 meeting Hackney Council convened to discuss the redevelopment. Local artists and writers had already captured the community’s suspicions of relying on private developers, the angst palpable in the room from the start. “Children have been deprived of somewhere to swim” cried out one man towards the front, before a doctor rose to announce that they saw it “an issue of human rights”, to much applause. Danny Russell, another audience member, used to swim over a mile in Haggerston Baths every morning. It was where his children learned how to swim, the only one within walking distance for several schools. Ultimately “it’s a health issue”, he said, and while the council may be saving money on redevelopment, “Hackney is paying for it in other ways”. 

“It is very clear that people’s main priority [for the redevelopment] is a pool,” reassured councillor Jonathan McShane, a smartly-dressed representative from Hackney Council, after almost an hour. “That message is well received and well understood.” 

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So when none of the shortlisted proposals contained a swimming pool, the outrage didn’t exactly come as a surprise. Mayor Jules Pipe attempted to quell the ire with a dose of hard reality. Hackney Council only shortlisted the offers which were adequately funded. A pool was simply not viable, and his priority — Hackney Council’s priority — was to restore the decaying Grade II-listed building and get the upkeep fees off of Hackney’s books. With an estimated repairs bill of £25m, and £100,000 of public money spent on securing the building each year, it was crucial to go with someone up to the task.

Castleforge’s winning proposal was to turn the baths into a mixed-use space: a six-story office block to the west of the building, and in the pool where Liz and Danny used to swim, a cafe. It was a far cry from the communal splendour of old — just a third of local residents who were surveyed felt it met local people’s needs — but it meant that finally the building would reopen. 

As the years crawled by, however, noises from Castleforge grew quieter. In March 2025, almost a decade since people crammed into that council meeting, councillor Guy Nicholson came to the Hackney Society, a local heritage group, with bad news. Castleforge was backing out.

A beloved community asset bungled by a bloodless private equity firm and a lacklustre local council — in many ways the definitive London story of our times. So how did it all go so wrong? And, after all this time, what is the future of Haggerston Baths?