When do you think the modern bathroom first began to emerge? The 19th Century? Earlier? Later? Would it surprise you to learn that the first water-bourne toilets, installed in every house and linked by drains covered with clay tiles, appeared in Lothal, Western India in 2500BC? With the decline of the Indus Valley civilisation, sanitary engineering declined and vanished too. You’re more likely to assume that the standardisation of personal hygiene began in ancient Rome, with bathhouses and public toilets.

It’s certainly true that with the collapse of the Roman Empire, sanitation systems disappeared from the West for a considerable time: the first indoor flush toilet in Britain was invented by John Harrington in 1596 for Queen Elizabeth I. Although she used it, he was widely ridiculed and never made another. The better-known Thomas Crapper is credited with popularising the siphon system and developing the flushing toilet we know today in 1872.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, most people in Britain accessed pit toilets situated in outhouses: flushing toilets were only for the wealthy. But by 1910, the ‘traditional’ toilet as we now know it (with its elevated cistern and pull chain) began to sell.

Today’s toilet is a direct descendent of this early 20th century model. Cistern height fell over the years, and today we see close coupled toilets (and their near relative, the back to wall toilet with a cistern concealed behind a false wall or within a piece of fitted bathroom furniture) as standard. But there is a trend for the traditional that’s never died away – owners of lovingly restored period homes, especially, keep the high level toilet in production.

Essential though it is, the toilet is only one element of our modern bathrooms. Personal bathing in the West was hit by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and it was not until 1842 that the first private, indoor bathtub was installed (in a home in the US). In the 1880s, traditional cast iron freestanding baths began to be sold in the UK: these are the same baths that would look familiar to a traditional bathroom enthusiast today, such is the current popularity of restored cast iron baths and copies made from acrylic and stone resin materials.

Hand washing has long been viewed as important: even during the Renaissance, when water was viewed with suspicion as a potential source of disease, clean hands and fingernails were favoured – and the expression of ‘dirty hands’ as a metaphor for guilt did not come from nowhere. Pitchers of water brought inside for washing the hands and face began to be usurped by plumbed basins as indoor running water systems were developed in the mid to late 19th century. Even today, though, we often hark back to the age of the pitcher and ewer with our vessel or countertop basins plumbed into a washstand or vanity unit – traditional style and modern convenience, combined in an elegant piece of bathroom furniture.

The modern indoor shower evolved from a very natural source: the waterfall. Upper class Egyptians and Mesopotamians brought the shower indoors, building shower rooms with basic drainage where servants would pour water to bathe them. And the ancient Greeks, as we saw earlier, used aqueducts to channel water into communal shower rooms.

The ‘English Regency Shower’ was invented in early 19th century: consisting of a top basin with a water nozzle connected to a tall pipework frame, it allowed water to be hand pumped into the bather below. These devices were not quite up to our modern hygiene standards – they had to be filled manually, and a supply of water would typically be re-circulated several times before fresh water was added. With the arrival of reliable indoor plumbing, showers could be connected to a supply of running water, taking the manual labour out of showering – and it was only in the 20th century that running water in the home became common.

The installation of bathrooms in private residences was taken up by the middle classes, particularly in cities, around the turn of the 20th century – and today Western homes often have two or even three bathrooms. With eco themes growing in the modern consciousness, bathroom design is going down a ‘green’ route: water saving taps, toilets and showers are the big innovations of the day. And in terms of style, our modern bathrooms tend to go one of two ways: traditional roll top baths, high level toilets, old-style vanity units with vessel basins, and traditional cross head taps pull at the heart strings of lovers of traditional home style, while contemporary bathrooms resplendent with wall hung, fitted bathroom furniture and modern sanitaryware are equally popular among enthusiasts for all things modern.