Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
South Harringay School Pool c 1910
I assume that it's come along a bit since this photo was taken.
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Comment by Lydia Walter on August 4, 2023 at 8:18
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Disregarding the ‘changing rooms’ it looks little different from when I used to swim there in the 1960s!!
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I couldn't agree more! The Boys from North Hareingay used it for a term! Long walk down the passage.
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Comment by Richard Woods on August 4, 2023 at 12:34
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Meant to add my two-penn'rth here. I went there with North Harringay from about 1949 to 1953. We were taught to swim - a euphemism for being chucked in really. We had great fun but I doubt much real skill was acquired. It was very small. However we did mostly learn to float. I do recall it being sheer agony for the unfit, unwell, shy. No quarter was given back then. I had childhood asthma - today I would have been excused (wrong) but then it was ignored (ditto!).
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I went to South Harringay during the 1950's and used this pool. I hated it, got pushed in once by accident and the male swimming instructor thought it was funny and told the other children to leave me to sort myself out. As I came up for the 3rd time one of the boys pulled me out much to the disgust of the instructor. I have always been terrified of swimming pools ever since and therefore do not swim.
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Christine Killick.......that pool looks enough to frighten anyone off for life ! Gawd it looks real 'orrible.
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Actually I recall it as tiny, very cold and with access only from two edges.
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We swam here (N.H. School) as a mixed class. Images of walking through the alleys holding hands. That was the early 60's and the pool looked a bit better than it does in this photo. Judging by those changing cubicles you wouldn't need to "streak" to show off your bits.
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Richard Woods when you are only 7 years of age it seemed like a very big pool but probably wasn't.
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Andrew makes a good point - maybe it was up at Redlands road sports field that the event occurred.
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Richard Woods, you are correct, it was small and cold and had access from only two sides. In the photo, to the right hand side was a narrow ledge (although I do recall our instructor balancing and walking along it at some point, no idea why). The top of the photo was the deep end and it looks like there could be a fairly rudimentary diving board right of centre, hence "pool side" was slightly wider here.
We also walked from North Harringay, along the alley ways, hand in hand, happily chatting. The "changing rooms" in the photo were long gone by 1964/5/6 when I swam here. Instead, two single sex changing rooms were provided; the girls was a rectangular, cold room with a sopping wet floor, a long wooden changing bench and metal hooks on the wall for our bags and clothes. We walked out from the changing rooms with bare feet using the same route we came in from the street, through into the pool area and down towards the lower left of the photo where the foot baths were located (I remember them as looking like two sunken butler sinks but could be mistaken). The routine was a complete 'Health and Safety' disaster as we traipsed around the pool and verruca spores multiplied in the warm, muddy pool surround. I remember sporting three verruca, missing swimming for some weeks and twice weekly visits to "the clinic" for scraping, cutting and gouging. When I eventually returned to swimming, I wore royal blue crochet socks, my mother's idea of a prototype verruca sock. If only she had patented THAT idea!
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