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In the 1930s, the Bristol Baths Committee announced its aspiration “Every Bristolian a swimmer”, setting a target that every home should have a swimming facility within a mile.
City of Swimmers is a verrucas-and-all history of swimming in Bristol, from the eighteenth-century Rennison’s Baths in Montpelier to the beautiful historic Jacob’s Wells and Bristol South baths, and the mostly overlooked pools in more recent leisure centres. Readers may have memories of a world of award patches, metal baskets, disinfecting footbaths, poolside “Please refrain from…” posters, and even slipper baths.
Surveying 50 swimming pools and bathing places in Bristol and the surrounding towns of Portishead, Thornbury, Severn Beach, Clevedon and Keynsham, Steve Hunt argues that accessible swimming facilities should be cherished and defended, even developed, for the enjoyment of the next generation.
Reviews
Whether you take to the water like a fish, or more like a cat, swimming flows through the story of all our lives, and yet it’s not something that most of us would even think has a “history” to it. But it does, as Stephen E. Hunt demonstrates admirably is his latest “verrucas and all” book…
Bristolians will find a fair bit of nostalgia, and some diverting stories, such as all the moral panics over men and women swimming in the same spaces back in more prudish times. The book also includes a list of 50 different pools which existed at one time or another in the area, along with a potted history of each.
Stephen Hunt takes us up to date with pool closures, campaigns, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to save some, and on to growing demands for the right to swim in the former City Docks…
Along the way, Hunt notes the close relationship between Victorian and Edwardian swimming pools and the public washhouses that were often attached…
If there’s a second edition, [Steve] says, a friend suggests that it should be waterproof.
Eugene Burne, Bristol Post 15/10/2024
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City of Swimmers
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