Victoria Baths also hosted swimming competitions and had its own swimming clubs. The Victoria Ladies Swimming Club is show above. The picture was probably taken in 1922. On the far left of the front row, with a Union Jack on her swim suit, is Maud Millar. Maud's family lived on High Street and she was a regular visitor to the baths. At one point she was the Northern Junior Swimming Champion.

The photograph was generously donated by Wendy and Brian Whelan.

The baths were of course used by local school and I know that Ardwick Tech took great pride in the success rate of its students in acquiring their Length Certificates.

Competitive Swimming was also a feature of the school use. In the 1920s life saving teams competed for cups and medals and bragging rights. Opposite is the Ardwick Central Life Saving Team - circa 1922 - with their teacher Miss Jenny Turner.

Every year, all the students from Ardwick Tech turned out at the baths to compete in our Swimming Gala and those of us who were not competing sat up in the balcony and screamed encouragement to our house teams. 

The photograph above was taken by Linda Longworth and supplied by Janet Sheldon.

The baths were very fussy about allowing scruffy little kids like me into the pool and, when I first started going, there was a large bath tub that you had to scrub-off in before entering the pool. In later years this was replaced by a row of showers along the wall at the entrace end of the pool. At first I remember that access to the pool, for those who weren't diving in the deep end, was down a set of slippery stone steps. These were later replaced by ladders.

As you will have gathered, the baths had two main functions. They were there for sport and recreation but they also provided a facility unavailable to many of Longsight's residents who lived in two-up two-down terraced houses. Here is how my sister remembers them:

In Victoria Park was High St. Baths. It is still there, although not in use. It is a listed building.  In the old days the baths were great. Ladies and mixed bathing. A great brass turnstile and inside a wrought iron balcony, wooden warm tubs to wash in, wooden doored cubicles. I used to go every week to have a bath. Up on the balcony there were hugh white baths in cubicles. A very large lady with a white coat, looking like a wardress with a hugh bunch of keys, filled your bath. It was big enough to swim in. For the same price, you got soap and towels.

I remember the man who seemed to run the men's pool, his name was Jack Walker. He taught people how to swim and watched them swim their length to get the much valued "Length Certificate". I remember he had a long pole with a scoop on the end of it and he would hold it out over the water as you swam, I suppose to give you something to grab onto if you needed it. 

Photograph above donated by Bill Bullock

The baths on Hathersage Road have been closed for a long time now and despite some very active campaigns to get them re-opened they stay boarded up. A recent report by English Heritage indicated that along with 43 other listed buildings in the Greater Manchester area, the Victoria Baths are "at-risk". The condition of the building is described as "poor" with structural and maintenance problems

I was taken aback some years ago when I was watching an episode of the drama mini-series Prime Suspect. A local gang headed by a very unsavory character called "The Street" (played by Steven MacIntosh) and his henchmen were interrogating a victim in an old building. As the cameras panned I realized we were inside Victoria Baths. Along the side of the baths ran the same rows of cubicles, with half door and curtains, I remember from my childhood. In fact, the only thing missing was the water in the pool and the smell of chlorine.

The baths were closed in 1993 and in the years that followed it remained abandoned and for the most part unloverd as it gradually decayed.  However, it did have advocates in the form of the "Friends of Victoria Baths" and in 2003 they promoted it into a place on the BBC television series "Restoration".  Funding from the Heritage Lottary Fund followed and work began on making the building water-tight again.  After £30m of restoration the gala pool was once again filled and in May of 2017 swimmers returned to enjoy their baths.  In an article in the Guardian on May 14, 2017, 69 year-old Brian Orbiston, who used to swim there as a child, said that, "... He was optimistic that before long the baths would reopen properly. “Look at all the people here today,” he said. “These baths are part of our heritage and people want them to be saved.”

Over the years Victoria Baths was a venue for a varity of non-aquatic activities as evidenced by this ticket for a concert by Gordon Desmond and his Orchestra  (shown here with the permission of Graham Anderson).  There is no indication of the year but it was clearly prior to February 1971 when we started using decimal currency.  November 23 fell on a Friday in 1945, 1951, 1956 and 1962 so your guess is as good as mine.  I have found references to Harry Pook and Nat Whitworth but none for Gordon Desmond.

Take a Virtual Tour Inside the Victoria Baths