[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HANKS to the many readers who have responded to my articles about learning to swim in the Thames during the 1930s and 40s – the subject is obviously dear to the hearts of many who look back fondly on those days.
I’m particularly grateful to George Webb who wrote to me from his present home in Instow, Devon to tell me about his memories of those times when he was a pupil at St James CofE School, Weybridge from 1940 to 1945. I’ll let George tell his story:
“The boys school of St James lay close to the Recreation Ground gates in Meadow Way Road off Baker Street in Weybridge.
“On a bright sunny day in the summer of 1940, a line of schoolboys wound its way down Springfield Lane all carrying towels, bathing trunks – and gas masks.
“We passed the area where the River Wey joins the Thames and continued along the towpath to the first bridge on the Desborough Cut where the first view of the bathing huts could be seen. Over the bridge, down the steps to the huts – wooden constructions, painted green.
“The girls changed at one end, the boys at the other and in the middle was the office for Mr Carver and Mr Palmer, the attendants who used to give swimming lessons using a long pole with a lifeguard ring on the end of it to help support the swimmers.
“This was paradise for us children, messing about in the river all afternoon. Sometimes two brothers – Bob and Ron Smith – showed up and would entertain us with acrobatics, handstands etc before ending with a graceful swallow dive from the centre of the bridge.”
But George also remembers that the war with Germany was never far away, even from the consciousness of the youngsters.
He continues: “Us boys would sometimes wander off and lay in the long grass watching the dog fights in the sky. The vapour trails were everywhere.
“Just past the bathing huts, a short distance along the river, the Observer Corps had its post. Sometimes it was unmanned which presented us with a great opportunity to visit and to see all their instruments and look through their binoculars.”
You can almost picture the Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitts wheeling and weaving in the sky above the river, can’t you?
George has many more wonderful stories of his years growing up by the Thames and I’ll certainly come back to them for a future column. Thanks again for sharing your memories, George.
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[dropcap]D[/dropcap]AVID Larmar of Walton also contacted me to say: “Your excellent Article on swimming in the Thames took me back to the 40s and 50s when it was a popular past-time for the local youths to use the river for recreational and friendly competitive swimming…on summer evenings and weekends.
“A group of us, aged 8 to 10, were periodically taken down to the river bank, by the old bathing huts next to the Walton Swimming Club building, by Mr Todd, a teacher at Ashley Road Junior School, for fairly basic swimming lessons.
“This informally and safely introduced us to the joys of swimming using the shallows just off the bank there and which many of us continued for many years.
“The more ambitious of us used to swim across to Tumblin Bay Weir by the Terrace Road Park towpath steps with rods for a fishing session on the shallow weir steps using to good effect the weed growth there for bait.
“Those were happy carefree days, which have stood some of us in good and healthy stead from then till now. Long may it continue.”
I also went to St James C of E in Springfield meadow but later in the 1950’s and learnt to swim just outside the bathing huts on the River Thames proper. This was after school in the early evening. There was a shallow part with a small wooden landing stage where with the help of my friends from school I learnt to first float and then swim in the summer of 1956. Having learnt to swim I then went around to the first Desborough Cut bridge where my friends would dive and take running jumps in to the Desborough Cut, from the grassy base of the bridge. Later in the evening Jacky Chandler might arrive and dive from the bridge itself, into the Desborough Cut. It is a sight that I have never forgotten, Jacky executing a beautiful swallow dive into nine feet of water from nearly thirty feet. Jacky would stand for a few moments on the wooden rail of the first bridge over the Desborough Cut, from Weybridge, and then launch himself into the air. He would execute a perfect swallow dive and it seemed to me that he was gliding through the air before finally entering the dark green grey waters of the channel. To watch Jacky who was twenty to twenty-one and built like a Greek god or so it seemed at the time as a fourteen-year-old, was for me totally awe-inspiring sight. His ability to stand on the bridge rail and perform such a perfect swallow dive was beautiful to watch. I looked up to him as a school boy hero
I would also go fishing there but rarely catch anything, then one day the Bathing Hut attendant, who I believe used to sleep in the bathing hut, offered me a perch of two and half pound that he had caught. I took it home pretending that I had caught it. My mother soaked it in salt water for 24 hours and my father eat it one morning for breakfast.
On another occasion, a friend caught an eel and we took it to the old Fish & Chip shop that used to be in Elmgrove Road, where the Waitrose car park now is and sold the eel for a few pennies.
I also met two German girls from Stuttgart who were camping on the bank of the Thames close to the Bathing Hut. One of the girls was without a sleeping bag, so I offered to go home and fetch one for her. On my return, I gave the sleeping bag to the young lady hoping that I might be invited to stay the night or at least tarry a while. Unfortunately for me, she took bag and retired making it perfectly clear that my presence was no longer required. The long-forgotten days of youth where fun and innocence go hand in hand to provide such happy memories.