Andrew Gilhooley's Blog

I learned to swim when I was about six years old. A friend of my mother’s from work, Sid Richardson, loved to teach swimming and had taught numerous local children to swim. So, on a Tuesday evening he would pick me and my mam up in their car and take us down to Hebburn Swimming Baths on Campbell Park Road.

The above photograph gives an idea of how the swimming baths looked around the time I was learning to swim, circa 1973. It was a relatively new building at the time along with the Council Offices, having been built in the mid-60s and officially opening in 1967. The gallery below shows the pages of the official programme for the opening.

This photograph shows people watching the opening ceremony in 1967. Swan Hunter Sports Ground and Victoria Road East are visible in the background as well as Campbell Park Road.

When the swimming baths first opened, people would be queueing up outside to get in , especially on weekends and during school holidays. Even by the time I was taking swimming lessons, the baths could get very crowded at times.

When you went into the baths’ entrance, there was a kiosk where you could pay either to swim or to spectate. “One and a half to swim and one to watch” would be my mam’s usual request to the person in the kiosk, so that Sid and I could go into the pool and she could sit in the viewing gallery to one side of the pools. The photograph below, from the official opening program, shows the entrance to the baths. You can see the pay kiosk to the right hand side, the entrance to one of the changing rooms (I think it is the women’s) on the left and the stairs up to the viewing gallery and cafe in the background. The main pool is visible through the full-length windows in the background.

If you were swimming, you would be given a thick elastic band with a number written on it in black felt-tip marker. The colour and/or number of the band, which you wore around your wrist or ankle depending on how big you were, would be used to call you out of the pool when your swimming time was up. When you went into the changing rooms, there was a clothes storage area manned by an attendant. The attendant would give you a metal rack with a number corresponding to the one on your band. This would be used to store your clothes when you were swimming, and was handed to the attendant for safe keeping when you went out to the pool. The photograph below shows the type of hanging metal rack we used to get, along with an elastic arm band:

The changing rooms had cubicles for adults to change and also an open changing area that was used for groups, school parties and the like. Once changed and your belongings secured, you could then head out to the pool area. To get there, you had to walk through a bath of brown disinfectant, an attempt to prevent things like fungal infections and verrucas. I was born without a sense of smell so cannot attest to this, but many people have recounted that the smell of this disinfectant and the chlorine in the pool are two of their abiding memories of Hebburn swimming baths (as well as the smell of the food once they got upstairs to the cafeteria!). I do, however, remember the warm, damp air and the clamour as you walked from the changing rooms to the pool area.

The Swimming Baths had two pools. The learners’ pool was the smaller of the two (42 feet long by 20 feet wide with a maximum depth of 3 feet and 6 inches, according to the official opening programme). It was also the warmer of the two pools, and here I first learned to swim. I can remember wearing inflatable red water-wings and being taught the rudiments of how to breathe and do the breast stroke. 

In the photograph below, you can see part of the Learners’ Pool as well as the Main Pool and the Viewing Gallery:

The photograph below shows the Main Pool, part of the Viewing Gallery and the entrance to the pool area from the men’s changing rooms:

Sometimes, two girls who may have been Sid’s nieces used to come to the baths with us. They were, I think, in their late teens at the time and I always enjoyed the attention from these beautiful young women! I can’t remember their names (one might have been Valerie?) but I remember them being there for the hot dogs after my 25 metres success.

I can’t remember exactly when my swimming lessons with Sid stopped, but looking back it was probably because he became sick with the cancer that would eventually claim him. I do remember that we had just started to learn to do the crawl, a stroke which to this day I have never really mastered.

My next period of regular attendance at the swimming baths would have been when I was at Junior School, aged around eight or nine. My class would visit the baths every other week for swimming lessons. I remember walking across the field from St. James’ Juniors to Campbell Park Road and to the baths in all kinds of weather. I remember we would all have our bathing suits rolled up inside our towels, and our goggles wrapped around the outside so that the whole thing looked like a gonk that you would win at the fun fair.

I don’t remember much about the swimming lessons with St. James’, but what I do remember is visiting the little cafe on the upper floor of the baths after we had finished. There, we could buy cups of Bovril or soup from a vending machine, as well as bags of crisps and other snacks. I remember packets of Smax, which were small, round crunchy snacks that came in a few different flavours, and also Fish and Chips, which were essentially crackers in the shapes of fish and chips, that tasted of salt and vinegar.

I remember an advertising poster on the wall featuring a red version of the Incredible Hulk proclaiming that “Bovril gives you BEEF!” You could also order hot food from the cafe, like a plate of chips with gravy, but we were never there long enough for that. The photograph below, from the official opening program, shows the cafe:

I would continue to visit the baths throughout my youth, though less frequently as I grew older. I remember the sign that was displayed on the wall by the main pool, warning patrons of all the things that they should not be doing at the baths:

I also remember the first video game being installed at the baths, possibly one of the first video games I ever saw. It was Lunar Lander by Atari, where you had to land the spacecraft on the surface of the moon, using buttons to rotate the craft left and right, and a lever to control the throttle. I thought it just about impossible, but some people seemed quite good at it! They must have used up a lot of 10p coins to get to be so good!

The gallery below shows a leaflet available from the baths during the 1980s showing some of the facilities and classes that were available at the time. As I said earlier, it was a very popular facility and, together with the Community Centre that used to be on Argyle Street in the 80s, provided a lot of recreational opportunities for the people of Hebburn.

I left Hebburn in 1986 to go to college and never visited the swimming baths after that. It did, however, continue to be a popular venue for recreation and in later years added features like a water flume, sauna / solarium and fitness room, though I never saw any of these. Here is a photograph showing the outside of the baths as it originally was and after the new additions and refurbishments. You can see the water flume at the back of the building on the left hand side:

This photograph shows the exit from the water flume into the Learners’ Pool:

In 2015, the new £13 million Hebburn Central facility was opened near the Newtown Shopping Centre, providing the town with a new Library, fitness facilities, a gym, cafe and two new swimming pools. This of course meant that the original swimming baths on Campbell Park Road would close, and by the end of 2016 the building had been demolished, taking fifty years’ worth of Hebburn history and memories with it.

The new facility at Hebburn Central is beautiful, and like the original baths features a learners’ pool, which is also used for aquatic exercise classes, and a main swimming pool. The pools seem to be the same size as the originals. The changing areas are more modern, with coin-operated lockers, though the seating for viewing is limited compared to the original swimming baths.

It is nice to see that Hebburn still has recreational facilities and Hebburn Central looks to be very popular. It offers a full range of exercise classes and activities, and the swimming pools were always busy when I visited several years ago. The cafe does a nice cup of tea, too.

It does have to be said, though, that I can still get a bit misty-eyed remembering the old Hebburn Swimming Baths and learning to swim with Sid. It all seems such a long time ago now.