British Sauna Society

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 407

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The British Sauna Society (BSS) qualifies for inclusion in our ‘Odd Socs’ column by virtue of its support for the bid to secure listed status for Britain’s oldest sauna, a wooden hut in Kent that is (in the words of the Twentieth Century Society) ‘a remarkable little survivor from the 1948 London Olympics and a hugely important piece of sporting history’.

Held between 29 July and 14 August, these were known as the ‘Austerity Games’ because of continuing post-war rationing. No new venues were built, and the athletes were housed in former military camps. The sauna was a rare exception, donated by Finnish companies keen to win contracts for the prefabricated wooden houses that were then being purchased by the UK government to accommodate families from bomb-damaged cities. Toivo Jäntti – who designed the sauna – went on to construct Helsinki’s 1952 Olympic Stadium.

The sauna was originally erected in the army convalescence camp in Richmond that served as an Olympic Village. After the Games, Albert Reed, importer of Finnish timber, acquired the building for the use of staff and re-erected it close to his firm’s Kent-based paper mill. The only other structure to survive from the Richmond site is an army hut, now used by the Malden Rifle and Pistol Club.

Finnish athletes went on to win 20 medals in the 1948 Olympics, mainly in gymnastics. Paavo Nurmi, the long-distance runner known as the ‘Flying Finn’, who won five medals at the Paris 1924 Olympics, attributed his success to the use of a sauna to improve his recovery time.

Sauna use has been an integral part of the Finnish way of life for centuries, a stress-busting tradition that was inscribed on the Unesco list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2020, and is said to account for the fact that Finland is deemed to be the happiest country in the world. Jukka Siukosaari, the Finnish Ambassador to the UK, who is supporting the listing campaign, says: ‘for us Finns the sauna is a spiritual as well as a social institution’. Echoing that thought, the British Sauna Society aims to promote sauna culture for its social, physical, and mental health benefits.

Further information: http://www.britishsaunasociety.org.uk

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Images: Wendy Liu/British Sauna Society