Downstream

down to the Baths’, as well as
‘very few competitors for the
Old Boys’ Cup’. Only five
took part in the long swim,
suggesting the tradition was
already beginning to die out.
It’s not clear when people
stopped using the Baths; like
the King’s Meadow pools at
Reading they appear to have
lasted into the 1950s and by
the 1980s were derelict.
It is this loss of a swimming
heritage that, until recent