THE HISTORY OF 80 EASTWAY
Ninety years of public baths, community centre, artist studios, galleries and venues, all in one 1930s building in Hackney Wick.
The building
First, the thing everyone gets wrong: the building isn't Victorian. It's 1930s municipal art deco, built when most homes in Hackney Wick had no bathroom and public baths were a public health programme, not a leisure one. Eastway didn't exist yet. The road came decades later, and the address changed with it.
Designed by Percival Holt, Hackney's Borough Engineer and Architect, the Gainsborough Road Public Baths and Wash House opens as the last and largest of Hackney's public baths: forty eight slipper baths, terrazzo floors, teak joinery and a laundry with hydro extractors spinning at fifteen hundred revolutions a minute. With no running water at home, this is where the estate washes, catches up with the neighbours and builds a community. It was even designed so a swimming pool could be added later. It never was.
New homes come with their own bathrooms and laundries. Bath houses across London close, and the boilers here go quiet. The exact year is still being settled in the archives, but the building stays standing.
The Wick Community Centre opens in 1994, and from the late 1990s SPACE, London's oldest studio provider, turns part of the building into artist studios. They're still here today: thirty unbroken years of artists at 80 Eastway.
New life as the Cre8 Lifestyle Centre, then in 2017 as The Old Baths, with a cafe, gallery, event space, darkroom and film and photography studio.
Known as The Baths and later The Bath House, the building becomes a home for creatives and music events.
In October 2025 Community Sauna Baths take on the lease, bringing bathing back to the building, and Eastway Baths opens as its venue, cafe and events home. Ninety years on, it carries everything this place has held, public bathing, community, commons and artistry, and adds wellbeing, music, events and fun under the same roof. In a building made with room for a pool nobody ever dug.
Also known as
Over ninety years the building at 80 Eastway has gone by a lot of names: Gainsborough Road Public Baths and Wash House, Hackney Wick Baths, the Wick Community Centre, Cre8 Lifestyle Centre, The Old Baths, The Baths and The Bath House. If you came looking for any of them, you're in the right place.
Each chapter left something behind. SPACE artist studios have been part of the building since the late 1990s. The Old Baths added a gallery, a darkroom and a film and photography studio. The Baths and The Bath House years made it a home for club nights, live music and independent film.
Eastway Baths is the venue, cafe and bar running in the building today. It opened in 2025 alongside Community Sauna Baths, who hold the lease, and is a new business, separate from the companies that ran the building before.
Got a story or photos from the building?
We're still piecing together the full history, including the year the baths closed. If you used the baths, worked here or have old photos, we'd love to hear from you at hello@eastwaybaths.co.uk.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
See what's on in the building now, or find out who we are.
What's on