Nostalgia: Making a splash in Glossop

Glossop Pool - then called Wood's Baths - attracted 10,000 swimmers in a single month in April 1955, when swimming was one of the town's biggest participation leisure pursuits.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that 1955 was the year when Glossop Town Council introduced ‘mixed bathing’.

Up until then the men had their allocated days and times and women had their times.

Councillors must have been more liberated in the mid-1950s and decided the sexes could swim together for the first time since the baths opened in Victorian times.

Fast forward six years and in 1961 Howard Park baths re-opened after being shut for a costly modernisation project.

The ceremony took place at 7pm on Tuesday, July 18, by the Mayor of Glossop, Alderman Harold Hadfield.

It must have been a big occasion as the council hired a coach to pick people up in the middle of Hadfield and Glossop and take them to the pool.

Improvements included improving the heating and lighting and a kitchen where hot drinks could be prepared on swimming gala nights. 

A car park was built at the side of the 1897 constructed baths block and more importantly a leak in the pool that had been around for half a century was sealed.

There were new changing rooms, diving boards and a balcony for spectators.

Wood’s Baths had been old and uninviting, now it was warm and welcoming. 

It really had come in from the cold.