Talk:Carlisle Turkish baths

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Lightburst (talk) 01:26, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

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Carlisle Turkish baths (at right)

• ... that in the 1960s one could have tea and toast served to your changing room at the Carlisle Turkish baths in England? Source: "Her mother, Freda, 88, remembers coming to the baths in the 1960s when attendants gave massages, and would deliver tea and toast to bathers cooling down in the cubicles" from: Pidd, Helen (2 October 2022). "'I'd be lost without it': locals battle to save Carlisle's Turkish baths". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
  • ALT1: ... that the 2022 closure of Carlisle Turkish baths left only 11 operational in the UK, out of around 700 built? Source: "The first Turkish baths in Britain and Ireland opened in 1852 in County Cork and, over the course of the next century, about 700 were built. Only 12 remain in operation, nine of which are public, and Carlisle’s are the last in the north-west of England." (NB: article was before Carlisle's closure) from: the same source as above
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Fort Phantom Hill

Moved to mainspace by Dumelow (talk). Self-nominated at 14:51, 17 March 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Carlisle Turkish baths; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Dumelow: Good article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 19:22, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Served to vs Served in vs Delivered to?

Hey, @Dumelow, is this BrEng? In AmEng we'd generally use either 'served in' or maybe 'delivered to'. I've never heard food/drink being served to a place. Valereee (talk) 18:34, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Valereee. Maybe, it's certainly common to see "served to your room", for example for room service. Perhaps there's a dialect neutral way of putting it? - Dumelow (talk) 18:57, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I think I'm fine with it. Just wanted to make sure there hadn't been an introduced typo and that there were others it didn't sound unusual to. Valereee (talk) 19:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Change of page title?

It seems to me that this article is more about Carlisle's Victorian Turkish baths than about Carlisle itself.

A couple of years ago the tiitle of the article on "Turkish baths" was changed to "Victorian Turkish baths" to clearly distinguish it from that on the "Hammam". The page also includes, as noted in the second paragraph, Victorian-style Turkish baths built after the queen's death in 1901.

This has been followed by other articles using this as a base so that if readers starts searching for such baths, as soon as they have typed "Victorian Turkish", this list appears: "Victorian Turkish baths", "Victorian Turkish baths, Dublin, Lincoln Place", "Victorian Turkish baths, Dublin, Upper Sackville Street", "Victorian Turkish baths, Harrogate", and "Victorian Turkish baths, Swindon".

Would this meet with general approval, particularly as it is hoped that in the near future Unesco decides to include Bathing in Victorian Turkish baths in their cultural safeguarding series Inventories of English and Scottish Living Heritage, and it could be that people unfamilliar with these baths will use Wikipedia to discover what they are? Ishpoloni (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Are there other Turkish baths in Carlisle that this needs distinguishing from? Noting that the "Frinds of" groups uses "Carlisle Victorian and Turkish Baths", with the Victorian part referring to the 1884 Corporation Public Baths not to the Turkish baths - Dumelow (talk) 08:56, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

There are no other Turkish baths in Carlisle. Your point about the name is valid theoretically but it's a bit of a mish-mash for historical reasons. It seems that while the baths were open they were in a building which the council named (weirdly in my personal view) the Carlisle Victorian and Turkish Baths. It was during the latter part of this period, when it was first known that the Turkish baths were under threat of closure, that the Friends were formed, so it made sense to relate to the building. Since the baths closed, the Friends became a charity, but for reasons I'm unaware of, they retained their existing name. And their website is https://carlislebaths.co.uk/ which might also be thought strange but probaly has its perfectly valid reason. However, once you open that page the message in large upper case letters is SAVE CARLISLE TURKISH BATHS, and clearly, whatever name the site and the Friends are called, the site is about the Victorian Turkish baths. So I feel that changing the article title to "Victorian Turkish baths, Carlisle" is most appropriate, and is consistent with an increasing number of similar baths on Wikipedia. Apologies for the length of my reply. Ishpoloni (talk) 10:00, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

My concern with the proposed name is they aren't actually Victorian. As you have said, our article on them says "Hot-air baths of the same type, built after Queen Victoria's reign (1837–1901), are known as Victorian-style Turkish baths" so should this be "Victorian-style Turkish baths, Carlisle", but this a bit clunky. Are there any sources that call them "Victorian Turkish baths"? If the campaign group refers to them as "CARLISLE TURKISH BATHS" then it is already at that title. Many of the online sources cited already seem to just use "Carlisle's Turkish baths". If the concern is readers finding the article by typing "Victorian Turkish" then this can be solved by a redirect, I have created Victorian Turkish baths, Carlisle - Dumelow (talk) 15:23, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you so much. The redirect is great and I am more than happy to rest there.

But if I'm being ungratefully finicky I would have to say that I would prefer the redirect the other way round. The concrete reason is this: If you type "Victorian Turkish" into the Wikipedia search box, then even before you have time to type "Victorian Turkish baths" the panel below the search box lists a main article and 4 others relating to specific VTbs—but Carlisle is not there.

Your point about the Tbs being Edwardian is, of course absolutely correct, though a search through the council minutes might reveal that they were, like Swindon's, possibly designed during the Queen's reign, though built later. However the real point is that the term "Victorian Turkish bath" refers to an entity where the word Victorian is less used as a strictly chronological period, but rather to distinguish the bath from the quite different Islamic hammam and from the steamy Russian baths which are often called merely Turkish baths (as at least one local authority does). I think the nearest example I can think of off-hand is that a Welsh Rarebit is no less a Welsh Rarebit if it is cooked in Bournemouth. So it's really only historians and pedants like me who occasionally make the distinction between Victorian and Victorian-style.

Having said all that, let me repeat my thank you for a solution I am very happy to live with. Ishpoloni (talk) 00:09, 3 July 2026 (UTC)