Downstream
swimming and life saving, with an annual gala held at the Ladies’ Bath. The Reading Swimming Club also sw ...
King’s Meadow pool tended to ‘migrate upstream’ to the backwater side of Fry’s Island. In 1909 the Reading ...
as in Lechlade it was now a place for some serious entertainment, involving everyone from established athletes ...
and the inhabitants of Victorian Reading were no exception. ‘We must mention the unique Association of Winter Bathers ...
February, and Master Fred Russell aged thirteen!’ Hood was said to have ‘bathed almost from his earliest yo ...
In 1902, the Winter Bathers had their customary New Year’s morning swim and then a celebratory breakfast where ...
commanded by the King and Queen to thank you for your kind message of good wishes for the New Year’. In 1908 ...
Thames when the town corporation bought View Island, four acres of land near Caversham Weir. ‘It will not b ...
were all the rage in the 1930s, with at least 180 being built in Britain between 1930 and This was part ...
south side of the river at Scours Lane’, with accommodation for sixty-two men and sixty women. There were two ...
diving which featured in government propaganda after the Second World War to show Britain was ‘back to its old ...
building family in Reading, remembers, ‘I was taken to the women’s pool when I was at junior school, terrifyi ...
around the bath and you’d be dragged along. Every one of my generation in Reading remembers Miss Francis. I ...
the council pool and we were at council schools.’ Gillian’s husband Tim, who had learned to swim ‘in a clean sea ...
River racing in Reading continued into the 1970s, with the local police holding a one-mile race in July. Here PC Barrett receive ...
Gillian, meanwhile, wasn’t allowed to take a boat out on her own until she could swim across the river to F ...
finding a place where there was a beach on public land and you could get in and out. Depth was the big issue; ...
emptying its chemical toilet into the Thames and after that, never again!’ Yet although river swimming fel ...
inter-club mile swim. The boys were ‘taken up to what we call Fishery Islands, where you still see people ...
no big deal; it was what you did then.’ Today what swimming club would take teenagers into the Thames, ...
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