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This year Leicester-based bathroom supplier Norman & Underwood celebrates its 175th year in business.
Whilst Norman & Underwood’s impressive track record makes it the longest established supplier in the region, Baths themselves have been around since Roman times when bathing was regarded as a social duty to be carried out in company!
Here Norman & Underwood’s Plumbing Supplies director David Stanborough gives us an fascinating insight into the world of bathing with 12 things you never knew about baths!
· The Bath-crazy Roman’s built aqueducts up to 14 miles long, supplying 300 gallons of bath water per head, per day
· One communal bath in Calcutta is 6 times the size of St Paul’s Cathedral and can accommodate 1,600 bathers at a time
· In the 1500’s most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May!
· Queen Elizabeth I is recorded to have bathed once a month
· In 1678 Louis XIV commissioned 4 marble baths with bronze fittings for his palace – each taking 22 men to move
· In 1880’s England the bathroom was regarded as the primary location in the house to make a display of wealth
· Although there is evidence of soap making from as early as 2800 BC, soap was not introduced for general use until 1880
· In the early 1800’s the British government introduced a law banning mixed bathing
· The first spa bath – Froy’s Oriental Spray Bath was introduced in 1882 and cost £147.7s.6d
· In the early 1900’s there were as many varieties of patterned baths as there were patterned wallpaper
· Baths were originally hand-made and not mass-produced until 1916
· Therapeutic Bran & Hot Water baths were all the rage in 1860’s London
· In 1898 Doctor Sanctorious launched his ‘Bag Bath’ – a bath in a waterproof bag tied up at the neck – unsurprisingly it never caught on!
Ends. 2nd June 2000 (330 words)
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