was so excited that she wouldn’t notice the mess the cows made and started by placing her hands in the mud letting her legs trail behind! Before long she could feel them floating and with simultaneous arm movement was well on the way to becoming a proficient swimmer to eventually being able to share her skills when older (but… not taught in quite the same manner!)
In these early years Pauline and her family moved to Reading, living in the big white house on the corner of Long Lane, Purley. (Now split into apartments).
A pupil of Kendrick School, her swimming activities continued being marched with her friends, crocodile style along to the Arthur Hill Baths. Roped off areas of the River Thames were also sampled on many occasions.
Although not allowed in, she particularly remembers a private swimming area for men, near the Blakes lock, complete with the company of a swan, who nested rearby using the area of water for it’s regular exercise.
Pauline talked about the Men’s and Ladies baths at King’s Meadow.
To quote Pauline,” These used river water which came in through a hole at one end and out the other, leaving behind frogs, fishes and good Thames mud. It was possible to dive in one end and slide several yards along the slippery bottom, and the only way to find an object on the bottom was to feel for it in the murky gloom. Sea-gulls and swans were regular visitors.
The Ladies bath was not chlorinated until after the war. There was a springboard in this bath, about three feet above the surface. It was a good board, but with only five feet of water underneath. There were well made wooden changing areas, which were covered with wire mesh which didn’t keep out the bird droppings or the icy blasts. To swim it cost 2d for adults and 1d for children. Children were allowed in free between 4pm and 6pm. A towel with Reading Corporation printed across them could be hired for 2d together with bathing trunks for an extra 2d. These were made of strong red twill with tapes either side adjustable to fit all shapes and sizes. They looked really uncomfortable. The baths only opened in the summer.”
By chance Pauline heard of a job which would fill the summer months before she went onto College. As a seasonal job it offered more than twice what she’d been getting in an office, £3 per week! Pauline applied for the grand sounding “Assistant Superintendent” at the King’s Meadow Ladies Bath. She was successful on account of her Life saving qualifications. She worked 6am-2pm one week, alternating with 1pm – 9pm the next.
One weekend during April, I had the privilege of driving down to the tiny village of Beckley near Rye to meet a lady – Mrs Pauline Wilson - who held so many memories of our town of Reading.
To say that she was a water baby was to say the very least. I spent a few hours listening to her tales and swimming pursuits from when she was a little girl, through her teens and into married life.
A lady of many talents, including folk music composition, and being able to make her own “bathing dress” Pauline described her journey through the swimming world which included her memories of King’s meadow Open-air Baths.
Pauline, who was born in Kingston-on-Thames spent her very early years in Ripley, Surrey.
There was not the opportunity and the same encouragement to learn to swim in those days – 70 years ago, and when 11 years old, she regularly wandered over the field to the place where the cows took a drink, and immersed herself into a stream of the River Wey. She
