THIS is what swimming lessons used to look like – an instructor not getting his feet wet while half the kids in the pool look on with interest while the others let their attention slowly drift away.
This is the now closed Govanhill Baths on Glasgow’s south side, and older readers will recognise the old-style of changing rooms with wooden doors around the pool, which would be banged open by the attendants when it was your turn to get out of the pool.
The good news is that while the city council closed the baths 16 years ago, preferring people to travel to the new pool in Gorbals, local campaigners have not given up on their fight to have it reopened.
Amidst the fund-raising, the Govanhill Community Baths Trust that was formed to save it, has recently been granted £1m in lottery funding.
The Trust has also been given planning permission from the council for its planned refurbishment, which sees not only the pool being brought back into use, but a gym added, as well as meeting rooms and facilities for people to run their businesses from the building.
Local people can also buy shares in the baths.
It’s now 100 years since the baths first opened, but it looks as though its reopening is now a probability.
The plans for the actual pool do include changing rooms around the wall, but they will probably have a more sophisticated system than an attendant banging the doors open when they want you out.
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