West Bromwich Gala Baths

Swimming in the summer - Dancing in the winter!
SUMMER TIME
This was the very first swimming pool I saw when I was three years old. I remember it vividly today. This huge, huge bath almost “as big as the sea,” surrounded with walls. with people splashing about, and so very deep.

I wondered where on earth my big sister had bought me!
I soon learned to swim and the Gala Baths were to become a great part of my early years with my parents, sisters and brothers-in-law, all members of the West Bromwich Swimming Club
The baths used to be an opulent building as one approached from the street. I was always fascinated by the boarded windows and iron railings adjacent to the side entrance to the Gala Baths. This of course was the original bath bombed during the war. I never saw inside, but my sisters had swum there regularly.
The Gala baths became part of school life too, for Interschool Swimming Galas, plus
once a week to learn Lifesaving skills.

The Galas had audiences which bulged the walls, and the Schools events were something else.
The bath was 331/3 yards long by 3’6ins in the shallow end, and 9’6ins in the deep end.
The diving stage went up to 4 metres high, with four diving boards leading up to the top. It didn’t have a springboard until later years. There was a foreboding drain
under the top board. (So I thought.)

I remember the water appeared so blue, rippling over the broad wide tiled bottom and sides, and everywhere was spotless, smelling of chlorine or bleach. The lady attendants wore white overall dresses and guided us to either the “cabins” upstairs on the balcony, where palm trees also took up position, or the “cabins” downstairs which ran under the spectators gallery.
There was a learners pool which was reached through double doors from poolside and a walk down wide empty tiled corridors eventually reaching
the pool. It was very small pool and just 2’ 6ins deep.

You passed by the entrance to the bombed bath, but this was always securely locked. There were slipper baths entrances also situated along this corridor
The main entrance to the pool was grand and spacious - but in my day it was never used! There was a minor side entrance to the pool just around the corner.
I have memories of many events, championships, galas and still feel the excitement.