BC - RECORDS OF BATH CITY COUNCIL AND BATH & NORTH EAST SOMERSET COUNCIL
- BC/13 - Bath as a Spa, Cultural and Tourist centre: records of Bath City Council and Bath & North East Somerset Council's responsibilities for culture, leisure and tourism
  - BC/13/12 - Records relating to the Thermae Bath Spa
    - BC/13/12/1 - Records relating to the Bath Spa Project (1997-2006)
      - BC/13/12/1/1 - Audio recordings of interviews conducted to aid in the development of displays for the Spa Visitor Centre, Bath

Interview with Joan Sandbrook who describes her experience of working as a Physiotherapist at the Spa Treatment Centre, Bath

Reference Number: BC/13/12/1/1/8
Alternative Reference Number: 0779
Level of Description: Item
Title: Interview with Joan Sandbrook who describes her experience of working as a Physiotherapist at the Spa Treatment Centre, Bath
Date: c.2005
Extent: Extent: 1 minidisc
Description: An audio recording of an interview with Joan Sandbrook who recalls her time working at the Spa Treatment Centre, Bath. This interview, along with others, was conducted to aid in the development of visitor displays at the Spa Visitor Centre, which opened in August 2006.

Further details of the date and location of the recording have not been captured and it is not clear who is conducting the interview. The recording is 00:05:25 long with the interviewer’s voice coming in at 00:00:04.

Below are the extracts of what was said during the interview. Please note this is not a complete transcript as the superfluous conversation in between questions has been removed:

[Interviewer] ‘Okay, so did you want to explain about the what kind of work you did at the treatment rooms?‘

[Joan Sandbrook] ‘It was all physiotherapy work. And we did quite a lot of heat treatments and used these mud packs to great effect. And people seemed to find them very comforting and helping them. There were patients that were referred to us from the Mineral Water Hospital with rheumatic conditions mostly. Knees, backs, and shoulders and necks, and all appreciated having some heat and some massage and some exercises for their particular joints’.

[Interviewer] ‘And what kind of treatment did they, what was the nature of the treatment?’

[Joan Sandbrook] ‘Well, the mud packs were made up out of Fuller's Earth, which is local. It came from up on Odd Down. And there was a man in the basement who got them ready for us. He mixed the mud up with spa water, which was at a certain temperature. And he put it into big flat bowls, baths, small baths, and carried them upstairs to our rooms, which were on the first floor. And then we dished it out with spoons on to cloth, on to pieces of linen cloth, and folded it into packs. So it was all contained inside the cloth. And the whole pack was then put on to the affected joint. And then we had towels around them as well, so it kept it all nice and warm. And they were left there for 20 minutes, half an hour to cool off. Well, it gradually cooled down, but it stayed warm for a good long time. It held the heat. It also held the moisture because it had the bath water, the spa water in it, which added, people thought, added to its benefits’.

[Interviewer] ‘And you spoke about the showers that you used to have as well, the kind of spray’.

[Joan Sandbrook] ‘Yes, they took place on the ground floor. And it was very ancient equipment, some of it, but it was still usable. And they would lie on a couch and have water showering on them and be massaged. They're mostly men who were not actually trained as physiotherapists. They were trained just to do their own particular jobs. Then there was another one you could stand up in, and there were pipes all around you which sprinkled water at you. And the biggest job was you sat inside and had steam all around you, which was a big cabinet thing, which was quite terrifying. I thought, the head was outside and everything else was inside. Definitely a very controlled temperature, of course’.

[Interviewer] ‘And people came to you because they had kind of rheumatic conditions, but you said that also there were some who came, you had a motorcycle accident, had broken?’

[Joan Sandbrook] ‘Yes, well, there were fractures and people who had had accidents, yes. And anybody who could benefit with heat and exercise, those are the people. We gave also other forms of heat. We had infrared and shortwave therapy. It was all there, all the usual physiotherapy department apparatus, as well as the mud and wax as well, another form of heat for the hands and sometimes even feet went into the wax, but mostly hands. So it was a good running physiotherapy department of all the particular cases that could benefit with heat’.

[Interviewer] ‘And the people you worked with, because you were there, what kind of time period were you there and how many kind of people were working with you?’

[Joan Sandbrook] ‘We took it in turns, a number of us part time, mostly doing three hour sessions, which is a morning or an afternoon and a break at the lunchtime period. And there must have been, I would think about six of us working at a time at once. And we all had our own bookings, patients lists to work on. And we were great friends really. We got on very well. There were about ten of us, I think, ten or even twelve there might have been. I can't remember exactly. But people came and went and some people stayed on for quite a long time, but others were only just with us for short periods’.
Existence and Location of Copies: Digitised MP3 versions are available on Preservica via internal access at Bath Record Office.