I’ve been cataloguing the contents of Lake View House for the National Trust

Other than its connection to Henry Handel Richardson the main value in Lake View is that it is a typical 1870’s corridor villa with an external kitchen block, and that the original floor plan is intact, meaning that there are six rooms, three on each side opening off a central corridor running the length of the house.

And there is no indoor plumbing, as would be the case in 1870 when the house was built – the water pump in the yard was it, and I assume that there would have been a discreetly located outside privy somewhere – it’s long gone and I have not been able to find an old photograph that hints at its location.

The house is dressed with a number of wash basin and ewer sets – essentially you filled the ewer with hot water heated in the kitchen, poured it into the basin and washed yourself with the aid of a sponge or a flannel.

But a bath ? That was a different question.

Heating enough water for a classic bath tub would have been a major undertaking, but that Victorian invention, the hip bath, made life simpler

Hip Bath, Lake View

It’s not often realised, and I certainly didn’t, but a hip bath can be very economical as regards water use. Unlike a normal bath tub, it would only need a few jugs of hot water to fill it.

In German a hip bath is called a Sitzbad, because one sits in it as in this nineteenth century cartoon of a man sitting in his bathtub wrapped in a sheet and reading the paper, the point being that only immerses a small part of the your body

To have a bath in a hip bath, you part filled the bath with warm water and sat in it, displacing enough water to cover your nether regions and you would then proceed to soap and wash yourself with a flannel. Sometimes people would use the bath naked as we would use a bath, other times they would put a sheet in the bath, the idea being that the sheet would wick up the warm water, and if you wrapped the sheet round yourself after washing, you could sit comfortably in the bath having a little aah-moment to yourself with out your exposed bits getting chilled.

Done in a warm room with the fire going, or in the kitchen with the stove lit, it would be a pleasant experience even in winter…