| Date | 4 February 2011 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0122 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Press Clippings |
Transcript
Swimming in the changes
WHEN I was about nine or ten years old, I remember going with my parents at weekends and during the summer holidays to the outdoor swimming baths in Maidenhead.
This was at a time when the Leisure Centre swimming pool had just opened but many families, including my own, preferred the quirkiness of the outdoor lido and its individual changing cubicles. This pool was one of a number of public outdoor pools to be built from the Victorian period onwards.
There had been a succession of swimming baths in Maidenhead. The earliest organised place to swim was a bathing stage on a backwater near to the old gasworks at Taplow just above Maidenhead Bridge.
As with many towns situated on the River Thames, there were a number of areas suitable for bathing off the banks of the river.
One such place was a little downstream from Maidenhead Bridge, by the old Rowing Club and the Riviera Hotel. There were no swimming pools in the town of Maidenhead itself until 1876, when Mr William Hamblett opened a large bath, 120ft long by 40ft wide, by the side of the Hambletonian Hall – Maidenhead’s first leisure complex which was off Market Street near to Providence Place where Sainsbury’s stands today.
In 1909, after it closed, the Corporation of Maidenhead opened a new swimming bath at East Street, close to the town centre, which was 100ft long and 40ft wide and held some 117,000 gallons of water.
As part of the celebrations for the Coronation of George VI, a new, very spacious swimming pool was opened on the site of the old East Street Baths on 15 May 1937. The new pool was constructed and designed by the Borough surveyor, Lt Col P Johns. It was 159ft long and 75ft wide and, when full, contained 360,000 gallons of water. The pool boasted a diving area of nine feet in depth, together with a stage, five metres high. There were two cascades of water, which played ornamental as well as functional purposes. Bathers could enjoy the facilities of a tea and refreshment chalet, and there were ‘dressing boxes’, lavatories and areas of lawn to allow sunbathing.
This large swimming pool was also regularly used by local schools and survived until 1989, when it was demolished to make way for a new indoor bowling alley. From that day onwards, the only place to swim in Maidenhead was the Leisure Centre and, for an outside lido, it became necessary to go as far as Ruislip or Hampton.
■ PARK AND SWIM: Maidenhead’s first open-air pool was adjacent to the Hambletonian Hall (on the site where Sainsbury’s stands today) and was built in 1876.
■ IN THE SWIM: Maidenhead Open Air Swimming Pool, which opened in 1937.
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