Scarborough and diving into the deep end – Yorkshire Post Letters

From: David Craggs, Shafton Gate, Goldthorpe.
The diving board at the bathing pool at the South Cliff, Scarborough.The diving board at the bathing pool at the South Cliff, Scarborough.
The diving board at the bathing pool at the South Cliff, Scarborough.

SEEING the photographs of Scarborough’s South Bay pool brought back mixed memories (The Yorkshire Post, July 10). The year was 1956 when I swam and dived in the pool for the first time.

A small group of us, mid teenagers, were obsessed with swimming and diving, and were blessed with probably the most modern indoor pool in the north of England, namely Wakefield’s New Baths, in Sun Lane, opened in 1936.

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It was referred to as the ‘new’ baths because the city also had an ‘old’ baths, opened in the late 1800s. To my knowledge the new pool was the only one in Yorkshire that had a full diving stage.

Swimming at Scarborough in the 1930s.Swimming at Scarborough in the 1930s.
Swimming at Scarborough in the 1930s.

But our desire was to ‘have a go’ off a 10 metre board, and as far as we were aware there were only two in the whole of the north of England, at Blackpool’s Derby Baths and Scarborough’s pool. We decided on Scarborough. Our mode of transport was a clapped out Singer, driven by one of our group who had just passed his driving test.

At first we only jumped off the high board, then tried a dive. My dive was perfect for the first five metres, then it all seemed to go wrong. Funny how you remember such experiences as if they’d happened only yesterday.

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