Gervase Phinn: Taking a dip in the past

Near the River Don in Rotherham in the 1950s were the Old Baths on Main Street. Some Saturdays, when he wasn't at work, my father took me swimming. There were no health and safety notices seen in swimming baths today – no bombing, running, shouting, jumping, ducking, splashing and pushing. It was such a free and easy session. We would spend an hour in the warm, pale green steaming water, so strong in chlorine that our eyes streamed for a good half hour after we had dried ourselves.
By The Newsroom
Published 10th Sep 2010, 14:40 BST
Updated 10th Sep 2010, 14:40 BST

On the way into the changing cubicles, the children would rub the nose on the bronze bust in the foyer for good luck so the only part of the noble effigy which shone brightly was the aquiline proboscis. It was said by schoolchildren that he who failed to rub the nose drowned when he got into the water. Of course, this was not taken seriously

but, just to be on the safe side, the nose rubbing continued regardless.

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I always thought the bronze bust was of Captain William Webb, the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875. His healthy moustachioed face used to appear on the front of matchboxes. One of my readers, Michael J Hoggard of Rotherham, former chairman of the Rotherham Secondary Education Committee, put me right. The effigy was of TW Burgess who, after Captain Webb, was the second person to swim the English Channel. Tom Burgess, born in 1872, was a Rotherham lad, son of blacksmith and not one to give up. He finally performed the feat, swimming from Dover to Cap Gris Nez on September 6, 1911, on his sixteenth attempt.

It was not unusual, as we were getting into our trunks (those terribly itchy woollen affairs with canvas belts and metal clasps) to see a rat, a visitor from the nearby canal, running between the cubicles. "Watch tha feet!" the attendant would bellow, "theere's a rodent on t'premises." This would be followed by the screams and yelps of children, frantically scrambling up on to the wooden seats in the cubicles. "Geeaw, wi' all that racket, yer daft 'apeths!" the attendant would shout. "It's more freetened o' thee, than thy are of it."

As I cowered on the wooden seat, I wasn't at all convinced. We would then hear scuffling and running as the attendant chased the intruder with a long bamboo pole.

"Come 'ere, yer little begger!" he would shout.

The pool was a screaming mass of adolescent bodies swimming in all directions and we twisted and turned, dived and side stroked to avoid collisions.

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Following our session, skin wrinkled and pink eyed, I would be taken by Dad into the caf and we would have mugs of hot sweet tea and teacakes. I used to pick out the currants before eating the soft bread and watch the swimmers emerging from the changing rooms, giving off the overpowering smell of chlorine.

When the Main Street Baths closed down, the bronze statue of Tom Burgess remained forgotten in the foyer for months and his nose lost its patina. He was eventually moved to the New Baths on Sheffield Road where the old tradition continued and his nose, rubbed again by children's towels, continued to shine.

YP MAG 11/9/10

Related topics:Rotherham