About Above The Stones

Above The Stones is an independent field journal documenting the craft, design, and reality of sauna in the UK.

This site is a place for notes on sauna.

Not reviews.
Not rankings.
Not advice.

We write about what we’re noticing as we spend time in saunas, talk to operators, and work through the realities of designing and building our own in the UK.

A lot of sauna writing sits at one of two extremes. Either vague wellness language, or technical theory that doesn’t survive contact with real sites, planning rules, weather, budgets, and people. This sits somewhere in the middle.

You’ll find three kinds of writing here:

Field Notes
Observations from sauna visits and experiences.

Design Notes
Reflections from designing and building saunas in the UK, especially where good theory meets real constraints.

Operator Notes
Occasional pieces based on conversations with sauna operators and builders.

We try to describe what we saw before offering an opinion. We separate observation from assumption where we can. If something doesn’t work, we’ll say so. If we’re unsure, we’ll say that too.

We’re the founders of Emberbrook, a UK sauna project. This site is separate from the business. Emberbrook may appear occasionally as a case study, but it isn’t the point.

This is simply a place to think clearly, in public, about what makes a sauna work.