A factory window, double decker, and school boy giggles!


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Portland Baths still there, what a surprise, the road out front has changed a bit though! You're right about the smell of bleach, what with all us mucky kids using them, the chlorine levels they must have had then would see them closed down now.

I remember the hair drying machine too, me and my brother used to go down to the Portland Baths in the school holidays, and always had a penny for the hair dryer.

Learnt to swim at Portland, still remember the brown cork floats. Metal baskets to put your gear in and return to attendant behind his counter under the gallery seats where you would get a safety pin with a metal numbered tag..

Remember al the holes drilled/dug out in the cubicle wooden walls and the care you used to take to cover them when you were getting changed.

Numbers displayed on a board at the attendants when your time was up.

Male change cubicles down one side and female down the other (side near entrance). Realised later why all the males, fathers and others, used to sit high up in the gallery near the entrance door....they could see down onto the female changing cubicles!

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I seem to remember as a kid when i went to Hayden Rd school we went to Elliott Durham?? for swimming, later when I went to Whitmoore I'm sure it was Noel Street and Seniors, Ellis Guilford was Northern Baths...may have been the other way around, I also worked next door to Lenton baths and when I first left home I used to to do my washing there before the part where the washing machines were got turned in to a gym.

Curly

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Trevor S, you brought back a lot of memories for me regarding Portland Baths. Trent Bridge School kids went there for swimming lessons and I can remember managing to swim a width and getting my 'Learners Certificate' and a cloth badge to sew on my bathers. Also, the noise from the shouting and screaming kids was deafening.

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How could I forget the noise....used to hit you like a brick wall when you walked through the doors onto the pool deck. And the smell of chlorine. Remember sitting in the water up the shallow end where the warm water was pumped in?

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Trevor/Michael I remember it exactly as you say Went there by walking bus from London Road school once a week. A session in our own time used to cost a tanner the session was as long as the attendant wanted it to be depending on the numbers. As we didn't have a bathroom at home we used to use the bathhouse mum esed the washhouse in the winter with those huge pull out driers that you had to hang the clothes on

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Hello Deeps, I don't remember my Mum ever taking the washing to Portland baths. I don't know if your house was the same but we had a big fireplace that went halfway across the room. In winter my Mum would do the washing and dry the clothes in front of the blazing coal fire. We only had one bath a week so swimming lessons at Portland Baths came in handy....lol

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Hi Michael

The fireplace in the backroom at number 20 was the old black hob type and was almost the width of the room we could boil the old kettle on it and do toast and dry smaller bits around it. The trip to the wash house entailed me pushing the washing in an old pram but not the one we collected the coke in from the cokeyard

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We had the same type of fireplace, Deeps, I wish we'd got one today. Mmm, maybe not, I'm getting too nostalgic. I had to smile when you mentioned the pram. We had a pram that was used for everything except a baby. Can you remember the CO-OP grocery store on the corner of Meadow Lane and Daleside Road?. We used to take the pram there to put the groceries in. We'd also use it to take rags and stuff to Trickets. I can remember them finding some large stones in the pockets. My Dad had put in to make them heavier and get more money. I was told if it ever happened again I'd be banned, I was only a little kid..lol. I remember that you got so much for rags but a lot more for woolens.

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Hello Deeps, I don't remember my Mum ever taking the washing to Portland baths. I don't know if your house was the same but we had a big fireplace that went halfway across the room. In winter my Mum would do the washing and dry the clothes in front of the blazing coal fire. We only had one bath a week so swimming lessons at Portland Baths came in handy....lol

We kind of forget that showering daily is a fairly recent innovation. We were always very clean in our household. Friday night was bath night - whether you needed it or not!

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Was Victoria the only Nottingham baths with an oval pool?

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I used to use the bathtubs at Victoria Baths when I lived in Sneinton Hermitage. There was a bath in the flat there but waiting for the tub to fill took an age and by the time there was enough water, it had gone cold.

 

The tubs at Victoria baths were enormous and you could fill as high as you wanted and stay as long as you wanted as well - all for sixpence. I always took my own towel, though. Looking back, I can't think why.

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