Wigan Album

Great photo Dennis.
I remember visiting Wigan baths as a child in the mid fifties but I remember stone steps and freezing water. This looks different and I suspect was not the pool I visited which was the main pool. More memories include:
1. Cold showers - the only way to make the pool water seem warm.
2. Woollen swimming costumes which expanded and came off if you dared to dive.
3. The rubber coloured arm bands which meant your time was up when your colour was called.
4. Old Spooner with the moustache who gave swimming lessons and scared us to death.
5. The Brylcreem machine it was only a penny but I could only watch in envy at my rich friends (it seemed like it then) would proceed to plaster it on. More often than not most of it covered their foreheads.
6. Communal changing room where you bundled your clothes, usually dropping them on the dirty wet floor (wire baskets for your clothes and cubicles were extra in those days).
7. The diving boards that you swam underneath at your peril because of the "bombers".
8. After using all our energy up, we would replenish our levels by purchasing a penny crust from the chippy in Millgate before catching the bus home from Station Road.

Happy days ........ or were they???

Wheres Spooner?

Hey Chuff, They were the BEST times to have grown up in. Everyone equal, no designer clothes, no electronic gadgetry.to keep us entertained, We could do that ourselves, We were happy with our lot. In my opinion we were brought up in an age which molded us into what, the majority of us, are today. Honest, Hardworking , Decent people

chuff you have brought back happy memories,ron your bang on.

Can still remember the showers there,hot shower always taken up by three or four Billy Casper lookalikes(oversized trunks,Purple lips and the occasional trickle down the leg, until Spooner came in with the cold hosepipe..O.K I was one of them haha..

Our entire class would take the 19 bus from Windy Arbour every week for a morning at the baths, on the way home we would buy penny buns from Macandlishes in Market Place. Great Times

The baths in those day was strictly seperately segregated between the sexes,apart from Thursday when mixed bathing was allowed in the ladies pool. It seems like something from a different age !

This was the main pool Chuff, Old Misery Guts Spooner would have been glowering over the rails at the opposite end of the pool shouting at everyone with a blue or red tag to get out and clear off when their time was up. The last ones out always used to have to collect their belongings from him personally. They were in the wire frame ,with a basket at the bottom for your shoes if you remember, which he hung over the railings threatening to drop them in the water. Does anyone remember those woolly tie us trunks you could hire if you'd forgotten your own? They didn't hide much, but then again it was so cold there wasn't much to see anyway!

Ron Hunt Vince has been in touch his commented on the coops photo along with his email address Whoopee !!! let me know how you get on

Hi Gerry yep I'm in contact with him. We are going to meet up next time he is over this way.

FRrRREEEzIng!!!!

The mens were a dream compared with the womens, there was an awful woman shouted you out after 40 mins

It was only when I joined environmental health that I learned that the first job the bath attendants had to do was to scoop out all the cockroaches that were floating on top of the water, still there was that much chlorine in the water I doubt any microbes lasting for long, I remember my friends and I after being in there going home with our eyes red and streaming with the chlorine. Remember the penny crusts too chuff. A younger fellow took us for swimming lessons, but Spooner would be glowering in the background twitching his 'tache. Did a gang actually throw him into the pool off the balcony or was that just an urban myth.

Good comments Chuff. I too remember penny crusts - (when we had a spare penny that is !) Anybody know when this pool actually shut for good?

Reading the comments here it's amazing how much pleasure the old baths generated for us kids. I used to run errands for my mam and grandma to scrape together the few coppers needed.
Spend as long as you could get away with in the baths, dawdle your way home, eat everything your mother could put on the table and all for the price of a few pennies. Today's kids should be so lucky.

Wigan baths with your mates and then a bag of broken biscuits from Woolworths, what an adventure.

I remembered the cold shower Ste but I forgot all about the hot shower - It was so cold in the pool eventually you had to come out and warm up under the hot shower and it was heaven but ......... to go back in the pool you had to take a cold shower again to make the pool temperature bearable. I too was one of those being attacked by spooner with the hose - knees knocking, ribs protruding, cozzie gusset down by the ankles. What a bitter-sweet experience it was ha ha.

Broken biscuits from Woolworth's ??? - you must have been one of the toffs I spoke about :-)

This is the land of lost content I see it shining plain the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

It truly is Linda - most appropriate verse by Alfred Edward Housman (I must admit I googled it)
regards

I remember having swimming lessons given by the bloke with a ‘tache. His only method was to throw a hoop tied to a rope across the width of the bath. The learner swimmer then put their arms through it and made an attempt at a breast stroke as he hauled on the rope and dragged them across to his side. Then you had to climb out of the water and walk back to where you started from before repeating the whole process.