[MAW]

Originally Posted by jambutty

Good old Accy baths. Many thanks for the picture Retlaw. It certainly brought back some memories.

Back in the early fifties single sex swimming except for some evenings and Sunday mornings.

Schools swimming in the mornings to teach those pupils who couldn’t swim how to swim by the accompanying teacher from the poolside. We were transported to and from the baths in a corporation bus for FREE as was the baths admission.

I was 10 when I taught myself to swim, sort of, after witnessing the fire brigade pull a drowned adult from a lodge. We were just messing around in the shallows as non swimmers.

Men and boys changing cubicles at poolside with 2 people to a cubicle. Women and girls upstairs.

Communal hot shower where bathers were obliged to wash first with the supplied soap, then step under the cold shower before diving into the water.

No lifeguard and only the boiler room attendant to be called if there was ever a problem.

Stone steps in each corner of the pool.

Three ‘splash’ diving board. Top splash was about 10 feet high diving into 6 feet 6 inches of water at the deep end.

71 lengths to get a mile certificate. I got mine when I was 12 and it took me over an hour.

Inter house school swimming galas once a year and also inter schools swimming galas.

Just down from the chip shop a street branched off to the left and just down that there was a ginnel that lead to a place where we could buy one penny and two penny bags of Smiths crisps. These were crisp bits but the bags were full to bursting.

My first job after leaving school and after training at Bank Hall Colliery in Burnley was at Scaitcliffe pit as a human pit pony. My job was to push a tub full of coal weighing several hundredweight from the coal face to the first chain.

At some 600 feet deep it wasn’t a very deep mine but the coal face was some 5 miles away and took about an hour to get there and an hour to get back to the pit bottom. No trains - we had to push our way along rails using what we called a sled.

Boy that takes me back. My cousin and I used to go the the "slipper baths" on friday evening and get chips forn the chippy across the road to eat on the way home. The water was always boiling and the towels were hand towel size and like sandpaper. Happy days.!!!!!