Victoria Baths is not in Longsight. It is in Chorlton-on-Medlock and always has been but it was our baths as much as anybody else's.  This was where we learned to swim and where all of those Longsight residents, who did not have hot running water, went for a bath. However, it should also be made clear that to us it was the High Street Baths, named for the street on which it was located. High Street was later renamed Hathersage Road.

The baths opened on Friday, September 7, 1906 and provided swimming pools and a turkish bath to local residents until 1993. At the opening the Lord Mayor of Manchester described it as, "a water palace of which every citizen should be proud". It was indeed a palace of tile, mosaic and glass with three swimming pools, individual bath compartments and both Russian and Turkish Baths.

The photographs below were taken by Shirley Aspinall in March of 2000 during an open-house organized by the friends of Victoria Baths.

Roman-style mosaics on the floor and Art Deco glass and tiles.

Somewhere, I think I still have my certificate for swimming a length of the pool from the shallow end to the deep end.

The changing booths were not always open like this. I remember half doors at the bottom and curtains at the top.

Up on this balcony we sat and cheered-on Temple House at the Ardwick Tech Swimming Gala.

 The slippy steps I remember from my first day in the pool. I didn't go much further that day.