Best swimming baths on Thames (90 years ago)

NINETY years ago, William Lee stood at the gate, boater in hand, resplendent in white shoes and trousers.

A butcher by trade, he was also the mayor of Henley so it fell to him to begin the evening’s proceedings.

He smiled for the camera and pushed the gate open to a round of applause. It was 5.30pm on a sunny Saturday, June 23, 1934.

Lee, his fellow councillors and the crowd that followed them into the enclosure were gathered to mark the completion of the Henley Swimming Baths, off Wargrave Road, a facility sanctioned by the Ministry of Health at a cost of about £2,000 and designed by the borough surveyor, F C Wren.

The baths and the opening were a triumph of low-tech public luxury. They celebrated the simple pleasure of swimming in a river, a pursuit that was mainstream — even glamorous — and yet also part of everyday life and leisure for this Thames-side town.

Wren’s design, both functional and beautiful, embodied this ethos. The entrance was flanked by two timber-framed attendants’ booths, bisecting a sweeping semi-circle of changing cubicles, their raised floor level pre-empting winter floods.

The typical bather paid for entry at one of the booths and then made their way to a cubicle. After undressing and donning their costume, they stepped out on to a raised walkway and past a white-painted metal railing to look out over a broad sunbathing lawn extending to the water.

At the centre of the bank were three pollard willows and a low diving board. Several sets of steps led down into the river on either side. To the right stood the metal frame of a higher diving platform.

In the water, the bather had the choice of a shallow end or a deep end within a cordoned-off stretch of the stream, hefty white staves marking its corners. The opening was marked by a variety show — a “water cabaret” compèred by English champion swimmer Jeanne Clilverd.

Taking their seats in rows set out on the grass, the crowd first enjoyed a speech from the mayor, who proclaimed the venue the “best baths on the Thames”.

A parade of “London’s leading mannequins” (the contemporary term for models) then exhibited the latest fashions in beachwear before racing on “aqua-cycles”and demonstrating “how to be lazy on a Lilo”.

Clilverd performed a series of virtuosic feats in swimming and diving. Russian emigré guitarist Alexis Chesnakov serenaded the crowd from atop the diving platform.

The evening concluded with Reading and Windsor swimming clubs going head to head in a game of water polo.

Henley was by no means new to swimming. The previous summer, 2,725 bathers were recorded over the August bank holiday weekend, equivalent to 40 per cent of the town’s population.

In effect, the baths updated and rebranded a place known traditionally as “Solomon’s Hatch”, a favourite watering hole even before Lee and the other local grandees were born.

The first move to formalise and enclose the site came in 1871 with the establishment of the Henley Bathing Company.

By the 1880s, there were free and paid swimming areas as well as changing sheds and ladders. The first Henley Swimming Club took to the water in 1894.

For some, river bathing was an article of faith. William Wing, an earlier borough surveyor from a prominent local family, bathed first thing every morning and was the bathing company’s secretary.

The spot was popular with tourists as well as locals. A visitor in 1880 mentioned “rising early for a plunge into the glorious stream at Solomon’s Hatch, then back to breakfast with such an appetite as swimmers only can approach, after which a quiet, digestive cigar…”

A visitor in 1889 commented: “I never could find out who the particular Solomon was that the place was named after but the bathing place is a capital institution for Henley; the water is clear and the bottom sandy.

“Between the hours of 11 and one it is reserved for ladies only and I am glad to say a good many avail themselves of this opportunity of learning the art of swimming.”

The origins of the name Solomon’s Hatch remain mysterious. Entrances to the vast medieval forest of Windsor were known as hatches, a term preserved in names of nearby villages like Playhatch and Hare Hatch. This might explain the second half. But why Solomon?

I enquired via the Henley-on-Thames Past and Present Facebook group and received many responses with people’s memories. Townsfolk recalled swimming lessons, the certificates they gained and the link between the baths and local schools, including the walk from one to the other.

Some remembered Harry Burfoot, the attendant from 1950 to 1974 — “a serious character but very fair” — and the swimming teacher Miss Harris, who also appears to have been a teacher at Holy Trinity School, a “great encourager” who “coached us in breaststroke balanced over school chairs”.

Many remarked on the water temperature — Mr Burfoot chalked it up in Fahrenheit at the entrance each morning.

One person was still having “nightmare memories of freezing cold water and trying to change out of a freezing cold clingy swimming costume”.

Another remembered buying hot lemonade from the kiosk at the baths after a swimming lesson and pouring it over their feet to warm their ice-cold toes.

Some linked the baths to their not having learned to swim. One recalled the trauma of being pushed into the river before having any lessons, which put them off for life. Another said that, given the chill of the water, “being taken there for lessons amounted to cruelty”.

Others were more nostalgic with comments like “Spent so much time there during the summer — it was always so much fun”, “Spent great times there — happy memories” and “Loved it there”.

There were humorous anecdotes, too: “I remember a guy back in the early Seventies, who we called Tarzan, used to dive in off the board and come up with a fish in his mouth. I think he worked as a fishmonger because I don’t recall mackerel being native to the Thames.”

The town council struggled to find a new attendant following Burfoot’s retirement. The future was uncertain. Then towards the end of the Seventies the gate that William Lee had opened in 1934 closed for the final time, the booths and cubicles standing derelict and increasingly overgrown.

In 1979, the riverside plot entered a new phase as the home of Henley Rowing Club. Progress was gradual, with much of the construction being taken on by members themselves.

After seven years’ work, the boathouse was finally ready and another opening brought new life to the old home of Solomon’s Hatch and the Henley Swimming Baths.

Meanwhile, Henley never stopped swimming. The Henley Open Water Swimming Club continues to thrive and this summer marks the 20th anniversary of the Henley Classic, an organised swim following the Henley Royal Regatta course. Other organised events include Club to Pub, a 1.5km summer evening swim from Henley Rowing Club to the Angel on the Bridge pub, a swimmers’ favourite for generations.

A correspondent for the Newcastle Chronicle in 1898 wrote: “The Angel has the good old riverside flavour of sanded floor and cheerful barmaid. In the early morning you will find the bar requisitioned for rum and milk by bathers fortifying themselves for a swim from Solomon’s Hatch or in the Marsh Lock pool.”

Swimmers have also campaigned for the health of the river in recent years. In November 2022, the Henley Mermaids

concluded a long distance fundraising swim with a protest where they called on Thames Water to end its record of sewage pollution.

The baths’ legacy is upheld, too, in the River & Rowing Museum, which stands opposite Henley Rowing Club. The museum’s Henley Gallery explores many aspects of local history and you can look up at the same entrance sign that generations of swimmers passed under on their way to the water.

The museum hosted an event on river pollution on June 28, just days before the general election. Billed as a hustings, it was compèred by James Wallace, of River Action, and featured high-profile representatives from the worlds of rowing and swimming.

There were speeches from anti-pollution campaigners and citizen scientists before the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green candidates to be the constituency MP went head-to-head in a question-and-answer session. Sadly, there were no musicians, no mannequins on aqua-cycles. Instead, there was much discussion of permits and discharge monitoring, E. coli and coliform bacteria, combined sewage systems and the esoteric inner workings of Thames Water and the Environment Agency.

But the spirit of the old baths presided in more than just the itinerary. The question of value, of why pollution matters and how we work together to put words into practice came up again and again. Jo Robb, the Green candidate and a Henley Mermaid, was particularly outspoken about alternative ways of living with rivers that could become mainstream were we to move on from the profit-driven model of privatised water.

She said this vision was already mainstream in many parts of the world and had been mainstream in Henley and all along the Thames with bathing areas like the Henley baths being a “prominent part of municipal life” within living memory.

Now more than ever, in the face of the “freshwater emergency”, we should remember the opening of the Henley Swimming Baths. River swimming was celebrated 90 years ago as a common good, facilitated by local and national government.

Much has changed but the past still offers insight into what’s possible, not only in confronting how we don’t want the rivers to be but also in envisioning how we do want them to be — for ourselves, for river ecosystems and for generations to come.

George Townsend is a writer, researcher and curator based in London. For more information about the cultural history of swimming, you can follow him on Instagram or see his blog.

Thanks to the River & Rowing Museum, Oxfordshire History Centre, Charlie Young and Katie Amos and Craig from Reading Central Library