In an earlier post, there are some pics of the completed plunge-bath, but this excerpt from the 1959 magazine gives the whole story.
One memory I do have, is of P.R.D.Davidson getting a special mention one evening, for carrying a hundred or so bricks round from the front to the back. They were the ‘bullnosed’ edging bricks, to save the inevitable leg injury, scarring for life etc etc…!
I remember there was only a garden hose connected to a tap near The Garden Room, and as this was filling the pool so very slowly, it took several days! I think we were allowed to use the pool when it was half-full, and of course there had to be a Grand Opening, with – I think – Bert Boltjes doing a perfect dive and swimming a length or two
When the form rotas were being announced, to arrange lists of who would be swimming at any particular time, it was inevitable that someone (M.S.Patterson) would ask GB at prayers, “When do we collect our swimming trunks…”? And it was a very valid question too!
GB ‘gently’ mentioned that we would all be swimming naked; it was done like that at many other schools, etc etc, and nobody really batted an eyelid, or anything else for that matter…!
The chlorine in the water did pong a bit, and as there was only a cement and sand rendered finish internally, it was always looked dark and uninviting, but I did learn to swim there though - not very well (I was never as good as Bert B., or Tim Bosher and Co.), but it was a start! We had to do four lengths to qualify swimming and diving in the deep end. (One length was a quarter-length of the big pool in the White Rock Baths in Hastings, where we all used to go in a coach).
I went back there in the early 1970s, when the whole place was nearly derelict. The pool was totally wrecked, and full of all sorts of rubbish and debris. Most of the bull-nosed edging bricks had been stolen, or chucked in as well. That occasion was the last visit I made, although there are a few other things to mention on another future post.
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