Liquid Listening - The Ladywell Arts & Wellbeing Hub

About us

The Ladywell Arts and Wellbeing Hub has been created by the charity Liquid Listening. Founded in 2010, Liquid Listening enhances the health and wellbeing of disabled children, young people and adults through Musical Hydrotherapy, a unique approach combining the physical benefits of hydrotherapy with music and underwater sound.

Within a warm, supportive hydrotherapy pool, gentle movement combines with music and sound transmitted through the water to create an immersive whole-body experience that can encourage relaxation, emotional regulation, positive wellbeing and engagement.

Until now, Liquid Listening has primarily worked with specialist schools and partners across the UK, training and equipping them to deliver Musical Hydrotherapy themselves. The Ladywell Playtower offers an opportunity to create a pioneering destination where bathing, wellbeing, culture, community and sound innovation converge.

If Liquid Listening is selected to take on the project, we will establish a dedicated charitable organisation, Ladywell Arts and Wellbeing Hub CIO.

The Ladywell Arts and Wellbeing Hub

The Ladywell Arts and Wellbeing Hub will be an inclusive, multi-use destination open to the public from morning to night throughout the year, with membership schemes and discounts for local residents. It will encompass the Ladywell Playtower, adjacent Coroners Court and Mortuary within the St Mary’s Conservation Area—sites historically associated with health and wellbeing.

The heritage-led, community-focused and sustainable reuse of these Grade II-listed sites will centre on water-based wellbeing, with facilities including:

Building Design and Restoration

Our approach is led by Heritage, Inclusivity, Activation and Innovation. Our architects are Purcell, whose heritage projects include the Elizabeth Tower, Battersea Power Station, the National Gallery and Canterbury Cathedral.

We will carefully repair and restore the Ladywell Playtower, revealing architectural features including the Tower, Chimney, vaulted ceiling, galleries and original brick and stonework. Our conservation principles:

• Understanding significance: Research the building’s architectural, historical and social value before making changes.
• Minimum intervention, maximum retention: Do only what is necessary for creative reuse while retaining historic fabric.
• Repair over replacement: Repair historic elements wherever possible rather than replacing them.
• Like-for-like repairs: Use traditional and compatible materials.

Our design also acknowledges Ladywell’s deeper heritage and the original Well by adopting its circular form within new wellness interventions. This connects the site’s 15th-century origins with its 19th-century civic expansion, reviving its long-standing identity as a centre for health and water. We will restore the roof of the tower and the original well.

The historic floorplan will be respected, with changes made only where essential. The Tower Lobby will remain the principal civic entrance, while accessibility and inclusivity are embedded throughout. A dedicated SEN wellbeing wing will be integrated into the wider complex rather than isolated.

New aquatic facilities will be carefully embedded within the historic fabric, with bathing functions housed in purpose-designed spaces at the rear to protect the original Victorian structure.

Community Benefit

The Ladywell Playtower is currently “at risk”, making action essential to preserve its heritage and realise its potential as a long-term community asset.

The Hub will:

• Make wellbeing accessible by design, encouraging regular community use rather than occasional participation. World-class experiences on the doorstep.
• Provide regular aquatic provision for SEND families and special schools in Lewisham and beyond, supporting regulation, participation, social connection and creative engagement.
• Create opportunities for young people through arts, culture, training and skills pathways.
• Provide welcoming spaces for sanctuary, connection and simply to “sit and be”.
• Strengthen the local economy through treatment rooms, new businesses, flexible hire space, skills development and jobs, while attracting visitors from beyond the borough.
• Enhance the public realm through restoration and gardens while maintaining vehicle-neutral access in an already congested area.
• Heritage stewardship: safeguarding and bring new life to an important part of Ladywell’s heritage.