Looking Back: Moss Street baths would serve Bolton for more than 40 years

The separate entrances for men and women visiting Moss Street Baths in Halliwell were clearly marked as this photo from 1937 shows.



The baths in Halliwell had opened in 1924 and quickly became hugely popular. Several generations of schoolchildren learned to swim there and the baths would continue to serve the town until 1988.

This closure coincided with work being completed on the new Water Place complex in the town centre which was opened by the Queen in December of that year.

But the state-of-the-art complex was beset with problems and would close just 14 years later.

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God I forgot how the outside looked like!

It brings back many happy memories this.

My dad and my brother used to take me as a child to learn to swim but the penny would not drop for me, probably because I'd been scared witless, my primary school used to take us to Whitecroft Road School to use their swimming pool.

Us non swimmers had to line up in hight order along the length of the pool and jump in.

Thing was most of us could not swim and I was the tallest non swimmer.

I was jumping into a pool which was to deep for me to stand up in.

God the teacher must have been mental.

It use to frighten the life out of me every single week but I still went and still jumped to my near death because that's what you did back then.

(Builds character, my dad use to tell me, and I guess he was right, I've always faced my fears ever since).

I eventually learned to swim when I went to secondary school and we used to go to High Street baths up Daubhill.

The two entrances if anyone is interested is because baths were called 'baths' because that was were people use to go for a bath - you had to stand up and scrub yourself next to the kitchen sink, which I had to do until the age of eleven when we moved to a house with a BATH and a bathroom and an inside toilet - God poor Rishi struggling without Sky eh!!!

The entrance on the left use to take you to where all the 'baths' were (before my time) and the one on the fight to the 'small' pool.

The entrance on the left ended up being for the 'big' pool.

As I've said, happy days, long ago now.



Thanks Karly, I love these walks down memory lane you post up from time to time!

I came across this one earlier today and thought you might haves liked it.

I’m sure you have mentioned Moss Street baths in the past once or twice too.

We used to go there for swimming lessons when i was at school and also went plenty of other times too. It was showing its age when i used to go as that would have been the late 70's/early 80's.

The swimming teacher was a lady called Mrs Stones and the name still strikes terror into anyone who had the misfortune to be taught by her.