York Hall - Old Ford Road, London, UK - Spas, Hammams, Mineral Baths and Saunas on Waymarking.com

The York Hall, officially known as York Hall Leisure Centre is a multi-purpose indoor arena and leisure complex in Bethnal Green, London and is situated on Old Ford Road. The hall, opened in 1929 with a capacity of 1,200, and is an international boxing venue and holds concerts and other live events as well as providing a local gymnasium and swimming pool.

The hall is owned by Tower Hamlets Council and in 2004 was threatened with closure. However, the hall was saved, and in 2005 it underwent a major multimillion-pound refurbishment in a joint project between the local Tower Hamlets council and Greenwich Leisure. The site is split into three sections: a leisure centre with pool and gymnasium; a Spa and a multi-use events hall.

The historic Turkish Bath or banya in the basement was the last publicly run example in the East End of London. In 1972 there were still six Turkish baths, a legacy of the high Jewish population of Russian and Polish origin. This included the traditional suites of Russian and Turkish steam rooms, sauna, relaxation lounge. This popular and often full facility was closed and re-branded as an upmarket Spa London by the council in July 2007, amid vocal protests from its users. Treatment rooms were added to provide a range of upmarket beauty treatments and other facilities now include a hammam, large sauna, two 'aroma' steam rooms, several hot rooms, a bucket shower, ice fountain and plunge pool.

Where customers used to give each other a massage with the traditional Yiddish schmeiss free of charge, they now have to pay £56 on top of the £21 admission, whilst treatments such as Hydrotherapy Hydration Purity Rituals have been introduced. Neal Hounsell, Head of Leisure Services at Tower Hamlets, justified the re-branding on the basis that the borough was one of the most deprived in London.

The York Hall Leisure Centre's facelift included a state-of-the-art gymnasium that doubled the size of the previous gym area, a refurbished reception area and pool and new changing rooms. The gym is blessed with a newly installed functional area including TRX and Technogym's latest functional frame.

The hall is also a popular venue for professional wrestling events, having hosted shows for major promotions such as TNA Wrestling, Ring of Honor, Revolution Pro Wrestling and Frontier Wrestling Alliance, among others. The hall hosted the UFC London open workouts in March 2019 featuring Darren Till, Dominick Reyes and others. The Hall is also where the press conference for the first boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul took place.

York Hall was the third in a succession of public baths built in the densely-populated East End borough of Bethnal Green, succeeding the small swimming pool at Mansford Road (1895, taken into public ownership 1898) and the Cheshire Street Slipper Baths (1900). The Mansford Road pool closed in 1920, and in 1923 the borough acquired a site at the corner of Cambridge Heath Road and Old Ford Road. Designs for a new municipal baths complex were obtained from the borough engineer-architect AE Darby; the foundation stone was laid in October 1926, and on 5th November 1929 the building - incorporating first and second class swimming pools (the former with a demountable floor allowing its conversion into a public hall), slipper baths, Turkish and Russian baths and a public laundry - was opened by the Duke and Duchess of York, from whom the new facility took its name.

As at many public baths, swimming at York Hall was a seasonal affair, with the flooring in the main hall taken up over the summer and reinstated again for the winter. After about 1950 the first-class pool fell into disuse, and with the rebuilding of the second-class pool in 1965-7 by the firm of Wakeford, Jerram and Harris, the hall became increasingly important as a boxing venue.

The sport has long associations with the East End, and until the mid-C20 fights were regularly staged at a score of venues ranging from pubs and mission halls to dedicated arenas like Whitechapel's Premierland, as well as a number of other out-of-season swimming baths such as Haggerston and Hoxton. After WWII their numbers declined, and public bouts increasingly gravitated towards York Hall; several future world champions, including John Stracey, Charlie Magri, Maurice Hope and Nigel Benn, fought there early in their careers, and the hall - though a fraction the size of modern international venues - is now widely referred to as the 'home' of British boxing.

Threatened with closure in 2003, York Hall was renovated once more in 2005-10, with the basement area converted into a health spa.