REPTON BOXING CLUB

A fine Victorian bathhouse in Bethnal Green is home to the best-known amateur boxing establishment in Britain, Repton Boxing Club, with a history dating back to 1884 for the improvement of deprived boys of the East End. The area is now modernized and residentially desirable, but the club just off Brick Lane looks just as it might have done in the 1930s. There is a good patina on white glazed tile walls, distressed woodwork, yellowing bout bills, battered punchbags and a well-used square ring. All this creates an authentic atmosphere for a casual visitor, but it is a little deceptive. Repton Boxing Club has been based at the Cheshire Street bathhouse since only 1978, having been housed at multiple locations in the East End previously. Boxing and the building represent two separate slices of East End culture.

Wall-suspended punch bags alongside the ring, where mangles and washing machines once stood.

Repton Boys’ Club, as it was originally named, was founded through the philanthropy of Repton School. The precise reason why a public school based 130 miles (210 km) north of London in Derbyshire should adopt the East End is now obscure, but it was likely based on a combination of idealism and practicality. To the privileged classes in late-Victorian England the East End of London was the very definition of neediness and deprivation. A boys’ club with a sporting side was seen as a way of alleviating hardship.

Repton Amateur Boxing Club, formerly Repton Boys’ Club, has a timeline unmatched in sport.

Connections between the school and club died had died away by 1971, but the name – by then Repton Boxing Club – continued, and its roll of honour has been impressive. The amateur club launched world Welterweight champion John H. Stracey, WBC Jr. Middleweight champion Maurice Hope, Olympians Mickey Carter and Sylvester Mittee. World Middleweight champion Darren Barker started at Repton and Audley Harrison won the ABA championship as a Repton fighter.

The Wall of Honour against the green and cream scheme inherited from the former Bethnal Green Bath and Wash House.

The club is shrewdly aware of the strong character of the place, preserving its ‘retro’ look and allowing it to be used as a location in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and other films. Club officials also emphasize that Repton is the real thing, not a leisure centre or a fitness centre, but strictly for those who aspire to three rounds of action, with shirts on, and headguards worn. For the ambitious it may be a pathway to a shot at greatness, and for some boys it is said to be a steadying influence and a source of self-respect, which was one of the principles behind the founding of the club in 1884.

The military slogan ‘No Guts No Glory’ inspires fierce sporting endeavour.

The surrounding bricks and mortar of the Bethnal Green Baths and Washhouse are the testament of the Second Public Baths and Washhouses Act of 1897. It provided baths for personal washing and facilities for laundering. Architect Robert Stephen Ayling specialized in social works that required high levels of hygiene, such as abattoirs and public conveniences. His design won praise at the time for providing space for prams, ‘in which the washers usually bring their linen. In most of the London baths this been omitted, with the result that the waiting halls are often impassable.’

Cherubs, indicating separate bathing arrangements, remain on the largely unchanged exterior.

It is built from red brick and bands of Portland stone, with a curved gable end owing something to Flemish style, and its decorations include a relief of carved cherubs over the male and female entrances signed by scrolls held by cherubs, and at its eastern end is an oriel window buttressed by carved angels. Equipment once housed within the laundry included hand-powered mangles and some monumental belt-driven washing machines.

The need for public baths declined swiftly with facilities built into new housing after the Second World War, and the entire bathhouse building was falling into disuse by the 1970s. By coincidence, Repton Club’s lease on space at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in nearby Pollard Row was coming to an end. With some financial aid from Tower Hamlets, the single-storey laundry washhouse part of the building was upgraded to accommodate the boxing club with no loss of sporting continuity.

As years passed, and as much of the building remained closed, the East End began to change. With the revitalized City of London lying close alongside and generating an increasing need for good accommodation, it was inevitable that the rest of the building would be transformed into desirable apartments.