It’s May Day and the summer season is warming up. The DJ Rob da Bank could have chosen to play at any number of events where people wear silly hats, get high and have a good time — say a music festival or somewhere hedonistic on the Med. But in the end he chose a new festival in Hackney with a crowd for whom Nelly’s Hot in Herre could have been written: the Saunaverse, the UK’s first sauna festival, featuring all manner of saunas, from fragrant, wood-fired versions to high-tech electric ones. It was a sell-out.
Rob, 50, describes the crowd as diverse: “Like the Green Fields at Glastonbury, a mix of hippies, trendy east-London types and some older people. I saw people turn up in Mercs and on hired bikes, but once everyone’s got their kit off it’s a democracy.”
He has long been a sauna fan: his own Slow Motion Sauna has two sites on the Isle of Wight — first Yaverland and now one at the National Trust’s Compton Bay, opening on Thursday. In January he did a pop-up in Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross; Chrissy Cullen, the development’s marketing director, said they were “overwhelmed, with the slots selling out almost immediately”.
It’s got to be said: sauna-going is hot right now. Take the recently opened Sauna & Plunge in east London, where members can enjoy steam and infrared saunas for £160 a month. Its co-founder, Max Reynard, says the space is designed to “eke out conversation and social interaction … if you’re in the mood.” For a more bucolic feel, the Wild Saunas (wildsaunas.info) website lists alfresco hotboxes across the UK and Ireland, such as at Elie harbour in the East Neuk of Fife, Logi Saunas’ roving operation (currently in Pembrokeshire) and the skincare brand Haeckels’s sea bathing machine in Margate (it’s free, but donations are welcome).
While, for the more elitist sweat set, Surrenne is the new members’ spa at the Berkeley Hotel in central London — you can’t get through the door without dropping £15,000 — and includes a sauna with an automatic infusion system that floods the hot coals with different essential oils every 20 minutes. Then there’s the infrared sauna at the Club by Bamford, set in 3,500 acres of Cotswolds countryside, where membership options start at £2,250.
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But really this new wave of sauna culture sweeping the country is not about swanky, spenny sweating. The British Sauna Society has been “deluged” with enquiries from people wanting to set up their own sauna and their membership has doubled in the past year. “Saunas should be inclusive, democratic health and wellbeing hubs,” says the society’s president, Mika Meskanen. In Finland, he says, where there are about 3 million saunas for a population of 5.5 million, “everyone is a sauna-goer. Saunas belong to everyone.”
The new-style sauna set are seeking the wholesome endorphin and dopamine rush caused by heat, maximised by alternating it with icy cold dips — known as “contrast bathing”. This is a big part of the burgeoning British sauna culture, with more and more gyms including ice baths alongside sauna and steam. Contrast bathing even has its own guru, a serene Dane called Dr Susanna Soberg and her Thermalist Method.
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Saunas are also becoming events hubs, with everything from artist programmes to poetry readings on offer. At the not-for-profit Community Sauna — which has sites in Peckham, Stratford and Hackney Wick — there are trans nights, sessions for new mothers and a regular grief sauna. The collective is also leading the way in accessibility, with entry for as little as £6.
Rob da Bank says the sauna crew is a friendly and motivated lot. With their dinky felt sauna hats — like something a pixie might wear sitting on a toadstool, but actually designed to stop the head getting too hot — and predilection for whisking each other with fragrant leafy twigs, they come in many shapes and sizes. And from communities to corporations, saunas are spreading. “I’ve been involved in record labels, festivals, clubs,” says Rob da Bank, “and this scene is genuinely the most exciting, fast-moving cultural movement I’ve seen. People say it’s the new yoga or the new pub — and while that sounds unlikely, all I can say is don’t doubt it.”
