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The First Sixty Years
1.
OFF THE BLOCKS
FOR
A TOWN of its size, and with its historic centre almost surrounded by water,
Poole was a surprisingly late starter in the race to bring competitive
swimming and diving to the local community.
In 1931, when Poole Swimming Club was founded, there were already
established clubs in most other Dorset towns, including Bridport and Bland
ford, while across what was then the Hampshire border, Bournemouth Swimming
Club had got off to a flyer way back in 1889.
What Poole lost on the blocks, however, was soon to be recovered as
swimming, diving and water polo rapidly gathered momentum in the pre-war
years.
Poole
Swimming Club was actually born on Monday June 1, 1931.
That was the date of a well-attended public meeting held at the
Guildhall and chaired by Councillor W. J. Stickland, who was to become club
president the following year and Mayor of Poole in 1938.
The club's first president was Dr E. S. Bowes, while William Leeming
and W. J. Morgan were elected jointly as secretaries and acting treasurers and
Messrs E. L. Bennett, W. Hoiden, C. D. Neale, Harrison and Edwards as
committee members. It was also decided to form a ladies' section at an early
date.
The
inaugural meeting was addressed by Mr H. E. K. Sawtell, President of the
Dorset Swimming Association and an English champion diver, who stressed the
value of affiliation to the county association and, through that, to the
national association, without which Dorset swimming had in the past languished
in the wilderness. Affiliation
had given Dorset clubs a standing, he said, and allowed other clubs to help
them by taking part in their galas and polo matches.
The
one slight shadow over the meeting was the apparent reluctance of Poole
Council to grant the club exclusive pool time at the new Corporation Baths in
Park Lake Road (since filled in). Mr
Sawtell said the facilities were the best in Dorset but would be "a
greater asset to the council if the club was allowed privileged use of
them". One of the local
newspapers went further. "Now
that Poole has the finest swimming bath for miles around, a club
2. THE FIRST LENGTH
THE CLUB WAS subsequently able
to obtain regular use of the baths for club nights and for their first gala,
which included scratch and handicap races over distances ranging from 110 feet
to 100 yards. There were also
plunging and diving competitions, a display of "fancy diving" and a
water polo match in which a combined Poole and Bournemouth team beat
Bournemouth Swimming Club 1-0 with a late goal.
The men's 100 yards open handicap race was won by H. Owen of Poole in 1
min 21.8 and the equivalent ladies race by Miss Cooper of Bournemouth (1
-34.2).
The club competed in eight
other galas in Dorset and Hampshire during a successful first year, winning
six first prizes, five seconds and six thirds.
Members also took first and second places in the Dorset county diving
championship, won the county team race and beat Wareham at water polo but lost
1-0 to Bournemouth.
At the first AGM, secretary
William Leeming reported that the club's membership stood at 49 seniors and 13
juniors, which compared well with the long-established Bournemouth club's 54
seniors and 27 juniors. On the
financial side the club had a balance in hand of £6 8s (£6.40).
Subscriptions were 2s 6d (1 2.5p) for seniors and 1 s (5p) for juniors.
There was also talk of acquiring the services of a top-class coach from
London once a month and of affiliating to the Amateur Diving Association and
the Royal Life-Saving Society as well as the ASA.
In the spring of 1932 the club
persuaded Poole Council to open the unheated outdoor baths from the beginning
of May instead of June, several hardy members braving the cold weather which
greeted their first training sessions of the season. The club also secured space in the Poole and Dorset Herald
for regular reports on their activities, contributed by "Plunger".
In one early report, Plunger
wrote: "Last Friday members of the club spent an interesting evening at
the baths, the first tests of the season being the chief attraction.
The fastest time for the single length [33.3 yards] was recorded by R.
C. Griffen and A. R. Bryant, who swam the distance in 34 seconds.
This time is certainly not up to the usual standard, the times last
year
for the length being on an average about 25 seconds.
The inactivity during the winter, and the fact that the men are
changing over from the old trudgen or side stroke to the crawl, account for
this drop in speed. In time they
will pick up their old speed again and, 1 hope, knock off a few more
seconds."
Other
developments included the adoption of Poole Ladies Swimming Club as a section
of Poole SC and the allocation of free memberships to one boy from each of 12
local elementary schools. There
was also a visit on June 21, 1932, by the "Swimming Times tourists",
who were touring the south coast to discover clubs and help them raise their
standards. After inspecting the
bathing stations at Sandbanks, Branksome and Branksome Dene Chines, the
visitors went away "convinced that Poole is an ideal holiday resort for
swimmers from all parts of the country" and agreeing that the town's open
air pool was "too small and that provision of an indoor swimming pool for
a town of 60,000 inhabitants is a necessity".
Events
during 1932 included a plunging competition, won by K. G. Clinchen with a
plunge of 43 feet 8 inches, and an individual medley, which in the
pre-butterfly days was called a "100 yards three style race" and
consisted of one length breaststroke, a second length on backstroke and a
third length on freestyle. The
winner was J. Smith in what today would be a modest time of 1 min 42 secs. But Poole's secret weapon had yet to emerge.
His name was K. G. Evans and apparently he was a serviceman who had
been able to train in warmer waters abroad.
When he arrived at a gala at Lyme Regis in August 1932, his reputation
got there before him.
"The
county had heard quite a lot about Poole's new swimmer but were rather
doubtful about some of the stories they had heard about him," reported
the Poole Herald. "However,
when Evans won the 1 00 yards with a net time of 63 seconds in open water,
with R. C. Griffen of Poole and the rest of the pack 30 yards behind, they sat
up and took more than a little notice. When
the 300 yards came on there was great speculation as to whether Evans would
prove to be a distance swimmer as well as a 1 00 yards man. They were not left in doubt long. He took the lead in the first few yards and gradually
increased it up to the finishing mark."
Among
the competitors in the open ladies events in the early Poole galas were
Bournemouth Swimming Club's Yvonne Glover and Olive Joynes (now Wadham), who
later formed part of the Bournemouth team which became ASA national medley
relay champions in 1936 and 1937. Olive
also became national 1 00 yards champion and an Olympic semi-finalist in
Berlin in 1936. Yvonne became an
international backstroker and a member of Poole SC after her family moved to
Blair Avenue. A report of the
first gala of 1932 gives
3.
THE LEEMING TRAGEDY
A
DRIVING FORCE of Poole Swimming Club in its first 18 months was a dynamic
teenager called Bill Leeming. Born
in Burnley, Lancashire, in 1915, he came to Poole with his family in 1923 and
lived in Alverton Avenue. He was
a talented artist and also a keen swimmer and diver, interests encouraged by
his father, John T. Leeming, a former captain of a competitive swimming club
in Burnley. Bill was just 16 when
in 1931 he became the founding secretary of Poole Swimming Club.
"I
remember the confidence and aplomb with which he made a personal appearance at
this young age at the Magistrates' Court to make application for a licence to
hold the first evening dance and social function to raise funds for the
club," recalls his brother John. "He
was very enthusiastic in organising functions without which the club could not
have survived. 1 remember too the enthusiasm with which he designed and
arranged the manufacture of the club badge."
Bill
also took part in many competitions himself and in 1932 came second in the
Dorset diving championship. Then
fate took a tragic turn. In
December 1932, after returning from a visit to his prospective employer in
Bath, he complained of feeling ill. A
doctor was called, then a specialist, and within 48 hours acute anterior
poliomyelitis had been diagnosed. His
condition deteriorated rapidly and in the early hours of December 14, despite
an all night battle by doctors and the St John Ambulance to maintain
respiration, Bill Leeming died. He
was just 17 years and six months old.
Bill's
death was a tragic blow to his family and friends and also to Poole Swimming
Club, for which he had done so much in so little time. But his efforts were not in vain for the club continued to
thrive, despite having no indoor pool, a problem which drove members to
Bournemouth for winter training from 1936.
In that year the first harbour swim was held, at that stage a strictly
male event with a course which extended from the Haven or harbour entrance to
Hamworthy Bridge. In those days
clubs were expected to make bids (in Poole's case £3 to £5) for the
privilege of staging county championship events.
Among those awarded to Poole was the county 100 yards championship of
1936 for which public admission charges of ls (5p) including tax and 6d (2.5p)
(children half price) were fixed. Another
custom then was to supply hot Bovril to competitors after the outdoor cold
water events.
The
Leeming family maintained their involvement with the club for many years, with
Bill's father serving as president from 1933-36 and 1939-46, his brother John
as president in 1958-59 and John's daughter Lesley Shand (now a Corfe Mullen
funeral director and runner-up in the 1990 Businesswoman of the Year contest)
also becoming a keen member.
4.
THE POST-WAR YEARS
POOLE
SWIMMING CLUB'S progress, like so many other things, came to an abrupt halt
following the outbreak of war in 1939. The
club was re-formed at a meeting in the Guildhall on May 17, 1946, when those
present were asked to stand in memory of members who, as the minutes
sensitively put it,
Prime
movers in the club's post-war re-formation were Joe Glover (president 1947 and
1956, vice-president 1948, county president 1952) and Clir Tom Sherrin
(chairman 1936, president 1948, county president 1947), later a borough
alderman and Mayor of Poole. The
Commander of the Parkstone Yacht Club, E. Phillipson, who was related to Aid
Sherrin by marriage, was also a great supporter of the club.
In
1948 Mr Glover introduced proficiency certificates for juniors (two lengths in
good style) and seniors (four lengths). The
certificates entitled members to wear the club badge and there was also a
premier standard certificate. Monday
evening was now the club's main training night with an hour's water polo every
Friday.
In
1949 the club was joined by one of the best-known figures in local swimming,
John Allin, whose work in banking had brought him to Poole from Lyme Regis.
Himself a former swimmer, Mr Allin was a founder member of the Dorset
County ASA (1 931), county treasurer for its first 34 years and the second
county president (1934). He was Poole SC chairman from 1953-62, president in 1952 and
1963, a patron from 1967 and Western Counties president in 1961.
He died in 1989.
By
1950, competitive swimming had begun to take precedence over water polo.
By 1951 Poole had established itself as Dorset's top club, winning
seven county championship events - the 100 and 220 yards ladies' freestyle, 1
00 yards girls' freestyle, 1 00 yards girls' breaststroke, ladies' team race
and men's and boy's diving. The
winner of the first two of these events was a former county junior champion
Jean Bartiett, better known today as the club's longest serving member and
former club, county and Western Counties president Jean Holland.
Jean won county titles every year for 2'u years (1949-68).
She also represented Poole in the Western Counties championships and
Dorset in the first-ever inter-county swimming match at Hemel Hempstead in
1954. The following year Jean
broke the Dorset 100 yards freestyle record while Terry Welch claimed a new
men's county backstroke record. Another
familiar name appears in the records around 1950 - that of the club's 1991
president Fred Loxton, winner of the 1951 harbour swim in a new record time of
63 minutes 33 seconds.
In
the early post-war years it was still common to hold events - including county
championship races - in rivers or the sea.
Money was short to the extent that in 1953 the club could not afford to
buy badges and had to settle for stripes instead.
But membership continued to grow and in 1956 - the club's silver
jubilee year - stood at 222. The
1950s also saw the emergence of a ladies’ water polo team and the first
Western Counties ASA courses for swimmers, teachers and coaches.
5.
BEYOND HALFWAY
IN
1960 FORMER county champion Sylvia Shariand was awarded a testimonial on
parchment for rescuing a competitor suffering from exposure in the harbour
swim. A new open harbour swim was
added to the club's annual programme in addition to the club swim in 1962.
Harbour swims continued until the early 1980s when the increasing water
traffic forced their abandonment. Club
membership was still growing rapidly in 1966 when girls ladies captain
Patricia Phillips introduced the colour group teaching system which survives
to this day as the star group system. The
club held its first fund-raising sponsored swim in 1968.
Jean Holland was a regular timekeeper at ASA national championships
during the '60s and in 1970 was invited to officiate for England at the
Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
By
1971 the club had secured the use of three heated pools - at Rockley Sands
holiday site, Henry Harbin School and the training centre for the handicapped
at Darby's Corner. It was not
until 1974, 42 years after the club first called for it, that Poole opened its
first public indoor heated pool, the Dolphin.
Other
landmarks included the first club biathlon in 1971, synchronised swimming
classes at county level in 1972 and the appointment of the club's first
professional coach in 1979. In
the same year the club was accepted into Division Two of the Western League,
the B team joined the South Coast Minor League and an open age group meet was
staged at the Dolphin. Promotion
to Division 1 of the Western League followed in 1980 and was maintained until
1987. Ian Pritchard joined Poole as chief coach in 1988; in that and the
following year the club missed promotion back to the First Division by a
single place but all came good in 1990 when third place in a closely contested
Second Division final at Keynsham made it third time lucky.
Events
held to celebrate the club's golden jubilee in 1981 included a thanksgiving
service at St James's Church, a return visit by swimmers from Brake, Germany,
whom Poole swimmers had visited the previous year, an open age group meet and
a family swim on June 1 attended by many founder members, past presidents and
donors of trophies. A jubilee
dinner dance was held at the Arts Centre, where a birthday cake-cutting was
performed by former vice-president Mrs Gladys Hallett, a founder member who
was present at the inaugural meeting in 1931.
The club badge was depicted in a floral display in Poole Park in 1981.
The
1980s saw a dramatic increase in the popularity of masters swimming for
competitors aged 25 and over. Poole
was in the forefront of this movement from the early days and the club's
masters squad remains among the strongest in the Western Counties.
The squad was formed in 1984, initially to compete in that year's
national masters championships at Weymouth.
The squad has come a long way since those early days, when standards
meant training was reduced to widths only!
Of the original eight Poole masters swimmers, only Jean Holland, Wendy
Hooper and John Maddocks survive as members of the present squad.
Masters events were added to the club championships in 1987.
The 1991 president Fred Loxton heads the club's first family of active
swimmers spanning three generations Fred himself, wife Dot, daughter Debbie
Wheatley and grand-daughter Charlotte Wheatley.
Several
other families can claim a three-generation involvement. They include E. Skerman (early committee member), sons
Geoffrey and Noel, daughter Joyce Wilcox (president 1965) and grandchildren
Keith, Nigel and Linda Skerman and Georgina Wilcox (president 1980); Charlie
Peart (president 1967), Betty Peart (president 1985), daughters Maralyn Lewis
(president 1987), Denise, Patricia and Gillian and grandchildren Annette and
Martin Lewis; W. J. Stickland (president 1932), son John and grandsons Johnny
and Robert; Pauline Willis, daughters Avril Palmer and Karen Huish and
grandchildren Rachel and Vincent Palmer.
Current life members are Avis Niven, former club and now county
secretary, Tony Mullins, whose efforts put the club on a sound financial
footing, and Jean Holland and Gordon Smart, whose services to the club have
been many and varied.
In
1988 Poole swimmers were involved in a record-breaking synchronised swim at
the Dolphin in aid of Children in Need. Roy
Castle was present and the record - for the most synchro swimmers in the water
at one time - made the Guiness Book of Records.
6.
CHAMPIONS ALL
POOLE
SWIMMING CLUB has produced a great many champions in its 60 years, including
three champs of the Channel. The
first of this illustrious trio was Sam Rockett, a former club captain and
water polo captain who was the first Briton home in the Daily Mail
International Cross Channel Race in 1950.
He later became training supervisor to 20 competitors in the second
international race and coach to individual swimmers for six years.
He also wrote a book on his experiences (it's Cold in the Channel,
published by Hutchinson in 1966) and was the guest speaker at the club's
golden jubilee dinner. He died in
1989.
In
1983 Poole swimmer Samantha Druce earned a place in the Guiness Book of
Records as the youngest person to swim the Channel.
She completed the crossing in 15 hours 26 minutes at the age of 12
years 118 days. She remains the
youngest girl to complete the crossing.
A
companion swimmer to Samantha in 1983 was Poole team mate Marc Newman, who
subsequently decided to take up the ultimate swimming challenge himself.
He completed his first Channel crossing in 1985 and would almost
certainly have beaten the all time record of seven hours 40 minutes had not
the French Coastguard forced him to tread water for two and-a-half hours on
the grounds that he was a hazard to shipping.
Marc has since completed four more crossings but has so far failed to
achieve his ambition to beat the longstanding record.
He has, however, twice won both the World Cup long distance
championship - in Lake Windermere and Lake Geneva - and the Lac St Jean lake
swim in Canada.
England
100 meter backstroke champion Yvonne Glover was the first Poole swimmer to
compete at national level or above and Sam Rockett was a trialist for the
British Olympic water polo team in 1948.
In 1960 Norma Thomas came 6th in the springboard diving championships
at the Rome Olympics. Norma
tragically died of cancer in 1984, aged 43, but she is remembered through an
ASA memorial trophy for the junior diver of the year to which the club
contributed.
Sylvia
Shariand became the first post-war Poole member to qualify for the ASA
national championships in 1961. She
also became the club's first Western Counties champion with a win in the 400 meters
freestyle.
Rob
Cure was probably the most accomplished swimmer that Dorset has seen.
He joined Poole Swimming Club at an early age and rose through the
colour group system to achieve his greatest successes between 1975 and 1983.
In those eight years he won 72 club, 82 county championship and 10
county age group titles. At one
stage he was county champion and record holder in every men's event and some
of his records survive today. He
also won four Western Counties senior titles, two of them in record time, two
south-western triathion titles and, after joining Bournemouth Dolphins, one
Hampshire title in which he beat the county 200 breaststroke record.
At national level, Rob finished 14th in the ASA short course 200
breaststroke championship in 1981, 1 lth in the long course 200 in 1983 and
4th in the national biathion championship in 1980.
Lynda
Racster's first national title came in 1987, when she followed up her
victories at county and Western Counties level by winning the national 1314
years age group 1 00m backstroke title. In
1989, as a first claim member of Portsmouth and Northsea SC, Lynda shot into
the British top ten backstroke rankings after a 66.5-second 1 00 backstroke
swim at an international meet in Sweden.
She also won both the 100 and 200 backstroke 15-16 years national age
group titles in 1989 and the junior backstroke title at the ASA senior long
course championships. This was
followed by a 17-18 years national age group win at 200 backstroke in August
1990, a few weeks before Poole regained Lynda's services as a first claim
swimmer. Lynda was a member of
the England youth squad in 1988 and the England intermediate squad in 1989 and
1990.
Other
Poole SC qualifiers for the national championships or age group competitions
have included Paula Cure, Rhona Newton, Sybil Anderson, Beverley Scott, Peter
Goody, Simon Frend, Neil Mullins, Paul Mason, Sean Blackmore, Julia Hansford,
Julie Cooke, the girls' medley team of Colleen Rogers, Alison Smart, Paula
Arnold and Paula Hartwell and, in diving, Josephine Glover, daughter of Joe
and niece of Yvonne. Lynda
Racster, Karen Fletcher and Stephen Druce are among those who have competed at
national schools swimming championships while Carol Hobson and Lynda have both
won medals with the successful Corfe Hills School relay teams in 1988-90.
Winners of masters medals at
national level include Jean Holland, Wendy Hooper and Hilary Johnson.
Jean's medals include a 1 00 butterfly gold from the 1985 national
masters while in 1989 Wendy briefly became the British 45-49 years 50
butterfly record holder before seeing her time beaten in a later heat.
National masters silver medals (freestyle and medley) were won by the
Poole relay squads of Avril Palmer, Gail Nuttall, Felicity Douch, Wendy Hooper
and Jean Holland (1984) and Dot Loxton, Chris Harris, Bronwen Storah, Wendy
Hooper and Jean Holland (1 989).
In
1990 Alison Smart won several events at the Post Office national swimming
championships in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Robert Cornish won the British Army
Cadet Force and combined cadet forces national backstroke titles. In the same year Poole lifeguards Mark Shackles and Simon
Ball - both former members - competed in the world lifeguard championships.
In
paraplegic swimming, former swimmer Anthony Stickland returned to the sport
after losing a leg in a motor cycle accident and won many medals in the
Paraplegic Olympics. He was also
in disabled relay teams which swam the Channel in 1981 (one-way) and 1982
(two-way).
Poole
members who made their mark in other sports include Jonathon Bartiett and
Alison Brown (international pentathletes, 1980s), Justin Whiting (national
triathlon champion, 1983), Clare Seager (world sailboard champion 1985),
Rosemary Purkiss (mixed competition winner and 3rd overall, 300 miles Arctic
canoe race), Frances Couldridge (national u/ 14 and u/ 16 tennis squad), Jane
Hunter (Olympic sailing team, 1950s), Kelvin Rawlings (British Americas Cup
team, 1987), Oliver Nuttall (national cadet sailing team, 1980s), Jill
Sheppard, Adrian Charters, Simon Ball, Jason Sullivan (national lifeguard
awards).
7.
GOING ON SIXTY-ONE
An anniversary message from the President of Poole
Swimming Club, Fred
Loxton, and the Chairman, John Maddocks
SO
... AFTER SIXTY years the club has grown from that modest beginning to a
membership of 500. The facilities
enjoyed today were not oven dreamed of back in 1931 but, had they known that
pool hire alone would cost £20,500 from an annual budget of £33,000, they
would probably not have started! Many
a club member of the past would blanch at the mileage
and dedication required from
the swimmers today but remember that water time in those days was limited as
much by temperature as availability. The
club has much to live up to. Let
us hope that when 2031 comes along, Poole Swimming Club is still providing
opportunity and encouragement to those who enjoy swimming as a challenge,
sport and ideal exercise.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
OUR SINCERE THANKS are due to
Roger Guttridge, who wrote this history; to Jean Holland for much of the
research; and to Chris Cusack, who designed our jubilee logo.