Archives / Memories. Brighton Swimming Club 1860–2013

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Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Floating Memories focuses on archiving over 150 years of the sporting and sea bathing heritage of the Brighton Swimming Club. In summer 2011, work began to create an accessible archive that delves into a fascinating and extensive heritage of swimming in Brighton using archives that date back to 1860. The project was initiated by graphic designer and Club member Paul Farrington who became intrigued by the rich and colourful history of the Club and the wealth of material held in the archive. Until this project, the Club’s archives had been largely unseen and unknown to members of the Club, the public or historians. Artefacts now properly documented and conserved include reels of unique 16mm film footage from the 1940s, letterpress posters, scrapbooks, gala programmes, badges, competition adverts, letters, photographs and newspaper cuttings.

The legacy of this project is an archive at the East Sussex Record Office, an online archive, a film archive at Screen Archive South East, a permanent exhibition at the Brighton Fishing Museum and the website www.floatingmemories.co.uk, which makes the heritage of swimming and sea bathing in Brighton available for everyone to discover and enjoy. Learning and participation have been integral to the project, and a series of opportunities for volunteers’ participation and engagement were created using both the old and new archive material through events that included memory days, exhibitions, walking tours, publications, website, film screenings and live music. The Club’s archives have been at the heart of this project and with hundreds of items available there have been extensive opportunities for volunteers to participate in heritage learning. Work throughout the duration of the project has included research, training, oral history, exhibitions and events. It has involved over 40 volunteers, 65 students, and a range of professionals from the arts and heritage sector and beyond.

PROJECT PARTNERS

MEMORIESFLOATING

EXPLORE THE BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB ARCHIVES STORED AT THE EAST SUSSEX RECORD OFFICE, SCREEN ARCHIVE SOUTH EAST AND A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS THAT HAVE BEEN RECORDED THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE FLOATING MEMORIES PROJECT.

PICTURES INCLUDE THE CODE AMS 6946, WHICH REFERS TO THE ITEM’S CATALOGUE ENTRY, STORED AT THE EAST SUSSEX RECORD OFFICE. IF YOU WISH TO VIEW ANY OF THESE ARCHIVES IN PERSON, SIMPLY QUOTE THIS NUMBER. ALTERNATIVELY YOU CAN VIEW THE ARCHIVES ONLINE AT www.flickr.com/photos/floatingmemories

THE DVD INCLUDED WITH THIS CATALOGUE ALLOWS YOU TO WATCH THE WONDERFUL FOOTAGE THAT WAS TAKEN BY BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB MEMBER ROGER DUNFORD BETWEEN 1946 AND 1954.

TO ACCOMPANY THESE SILENT FILMS, A SPECIALLY RECORDED SOUNDTRACK HAS BEEN MADE BY STUDENTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON AND BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB MEMBER BELLA KARDASIS. LAYERED WITHIN THE MUSIC ARE EXTRACTS OF INTERVIEWS FROM MEMBERS OF BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB, BOTH RECOLLECTING MOMENTS IN THE FILM AND TALKING ABOUT THEIR SWIMMING MEMORIES TODAY.

THROUGHOUT THIS CATALOGUE A SERIES OF QUOTES HAVE BEEN SELECTED FROM OVER 40 HOURS OF INTERVIEWS MADE WITH BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB MEMBERS, PAST AND PRESENT. IF YOU WISH TO LISTEN TO ANY OF THE RECORDINGS PLEASE VISIT www.floatingmemories.co.uk/oralhistories

Published in 2013 by Floating Memories Brighton Swimming Club

[email protected] Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Paul Farrington, Designer Lindy Dunlop, Editor Juliette Buss, Project Manager

Images on pages 6, 26, 52, 66, 74 and 91 from the James Gray Collection, the photographic archive of the Regency Society. www.regencysociety.org

ResearchJudy WoodmanDavid Simkins Anna ZehnpfundDarren TaffinderLindsey Tydeman

DigitisationMladen GrabovacHelen ReynoldsRene GonzalesDarren TaffinderMadeleine Swift

InterviewsJudy WoodmanAnthony Elliot Sheila SelwayDarren TaffinderSusi Maxwell StewartLiz BruchetKatie Wright Higgins Molly Carter

TrainingAndrew Bennett Alan DeinKevin Meredith John RichesHeather York

Project PartnersAndrew Bennett, East Sussex Record OfficeJohn Riches, Queenspark PublishingFrank Gray and Jane King, Screen Archive South EastKevin Bacon, Brighton MuseumPaul Jordan, Brighton MuseumAndy Durr, Brighton Fishing MuseumFred Gray, University of SussexHeather York, Brighton MuseumThe Regency SocietyUniversity of Brighton

This catalogue is dedicated to Roger Dunford and John Ottaway and the memories of Brighton Swimming Club members, past and present. Special thanks go to David Sawyers for his inspirational discussions in the Arch and Dudley Seifert for his connections to the past. Paul Farrington would personally like to thank everyone who took part in the Floating Memories project, especially Judy Woodman, Andrew Bennett, Andy Durr, the volunteers and all the members of Brighton Swimming Club who participated in this project.

179 Photograph showing members of the Brighton Swimming Club advertising OXO, c. 1910. AMS 6946/14/36

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Cover image: Brighton Swimming Club, albumen print by Benjamin Botham, 1863. AMS 6946/2/3

This catalogue takes the reader on a journey into what it means to remember, and the concept of memory turns out to be of great importance, as those who were part of the Brighton Swimming Club became makers of history by merely remembering their time with the Club. Experience and collections of thoughts seem to be irrelevant and trivial, but by rediscovering stories from various perspectives, connections are made and a collective memory is built, which in itself forms a link to the past and therefore history.

The Floating Memories project offered the opportunity to examine first-hand, material such as photographs dating back to 1863, membership documents and competition posters, which is not only highly valuable for everyone who is interested in documenting the past, but also a journey back in time. The reader is not only given the chance to examine these things closely, but also allowed in to the world of the Swimming Club through interviews and accounts, which makes the stories, images and events more real. It is history brought to life. And it is much more: it is the chance to relive memories through other people’s experience and maybe even take something home and make it one’s own.

The story told through Club members offers an alternative view of Brighton, showing that the Swimming Club is not only about swimming. The photographs, accounts, interviews and documents, amongst other things, create a beautiful and palpable piece of communal memory, not only for members of the Club but for all. The reader is invited to explore the displayed images and written pieces hand in hand with the authors of this book, as there is no narration as such – the book offers a way of exploring and building memories together.

The Floating Memories project focuses on the relationship between the individual and the community, between a club and its members, and between the swimmer and the sea.

The catalogue aims to reveal that the title of the Floating Memories project is much more than a witty word play; memories seem to be floating about, and through talking, sometimes digging and often just reminiscing, these driftwood-like pieces of memory float up to the surface and shall be collected and preserved like other precious objects found on Brighton beach.

AnnA ZehnpfundFloating MeMories volunteer

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1 The Argus, photo © Kevin Meredith, 14th September 2011.

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I spent my teenage years swimming competitively for my local club, but at the age of 16 I gave it up because every weekend I had to train for hours on end whilst my friends were watching kids’ TV or going into town. I loved swimming in the sea but only got the chance when on holiday in North Wales. My mum has always said she couldn’t get me out of the water.

One of the reasons I moved to Brighton was the sea but after living here for six years I realised I had never actually swum in it. So one day, when I took my daughters to the local pool, I picked up a leaflet that advertised a class in sea swimming and signed up. Towards the end of the course, the teacher invited me to join him on a Saturday morning at the Brighton Swimming Club. I can still remember the fear I had on that cold April morning as other members ventured out and swam around the Palace Pier. From that day I decided to join the Club and soon was addicted. I would go to bed dreaming of water and would eagerly wake up at 6.00am to have my morning excursion around the pier, before heading home to get my kids ready for school. I have swum in the sea now every day for the past four years, whatever the weather. Sea swimming is an experience that touches all the senses, and it’s one of the only times I feel connected with nature. I love the feeling of cold water (the colder the better), the sensation of salt crystals forming as they dry on my skin, the sound and motion of waves, the way the rising sun makes the pier look like it’s on fire, the starlings flying overhead and glimpsing the contour of the coastline as I take my breath between strokes.

The Club was established in 1860 and has always been based by the beach. Its current location is along the King’s Road Arches just near the Palace Pier. It was there, in the small changing room, that I started chatting to older members and became fascinated by their personal adventures and stories. One of them, a chap called David Sawyers, told me about a Club archive he collected in 1996. He had given it to Brighton Museum for safekeeping. I have never really been interested in any history, but one day I got in contact with the Keeper at Brighton Museum and asked to see the archive. It was held at Preston Manor, and I can still remember sitting in a room and being brought six boxes. Each held the most amazing material. I couldn’t believe that it was just sat there and not made public. Original letterpress posters and newspaper cuttings dated as early as 1860 that described Club activities held at the Chain Pier and West Pier, and those of Captain Camp (the one-legged swimming instructor); logbooks listing the number of bathers and weather conditions; journals and a Minutes book that detailed the first meeting; carte de visite cards; photographs showing ‘the Winter Bathers’ in 1891 and a whole series of press cuttings and handwritten notes.

At that moment I knew something had to be done with this wonderful archive. The first idea I had was to simply photograph these items for my own collection, but over time this idea developed and a friend told me that I should apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund – turning this project into something far greater than I had ever imagined.

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2 Film still from Beach Snapshots 1946–1954, The Roger Dunford Film Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.3 Handwritten label from Roger Dunford’s film canister. 4 Photograph from the Club’s archives, date unknown.

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5 Handbill pasted on to the cover of a Brighton Swimming Club scrapbook for the season of 1862. AMS 6946/2/1

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In April 2011, I made a pre-application to the Heritage Lottery Fund with a basic idea around the Club’s archives. This was approved and I then made a final application, which took me almost a year to complete. The reason it took me that long was that I had to develop the project to see what was possible, meet with older swimmers and also create a series of partnerships – between Brighton Museum, East Sussex Record Office, Screen Archive South East, Design Archives at the University of Brighton, the University of Sussex and the Brighton Fishing Museum – that would help me to deliver the various stages of the project if the application were successful.

In November 2010 I found out about Roger Dunford, an older member of Brighton Swimming Club who had taken a series of films as early as 1946. I met him at his home and recorded him talking about time in the Club and his life in general. On our third visit his wife took me to their garden shed and presented me with his collection of films. I could not believe that he still had them all these years later. There were 23 tins in total, and on each tin Roger had written notes about the contents. Three tins were specific to Brighton Swimming Club, dated, and notes included: ‘antics on a hot summer day at Black Rock pool’, and ‘Father Neptune celebrations’. One of my favourite scenes from the films was seeing Roger climb to the top of the Palace Pier the day the beach was opened after the war ended. At the end of our meeting his wife allowed me to take these films away to copy. A few months later Roger passed away and his wife donated the original films to Screen Archive South East as part of my project.

Another highlight in developing the application was meeting Andy Durr from Brighton Fishing Museum. When I first met Andy, I only really went to speak to him about an exhibition that I wanted to produce with graphic design and illustration students from the University of Brighton, but when he saw the poster collection he offered me a permanent exhibition. When I was offered this it made me feel that my project had a legacy – other people would get to enjoy this amazing material.

In August 2011, my final application to the Heritage Lottery Fund was awarded, and since then the archives have been moved from Brighton Museum to East Sussex Record Office where they have been properly catalogued and photographed. Roger’s films have been digitised and can now also be seen in the Brighton Fishing Museum. Forty oral history recordings have been made with members past and present, and these are available on the project website www.floatingmemories.co.uk. Sixty-five students from the University of Brighton produced work in response to the archives and held a two-week exhibition. We have also produced a walking tour and a map that tells the stories of Brighton’s forgotten bathing houses and swimming pools. One of the project volunteers got so enthralled by the stories of Captain Camp that she applied to Brighton & Hove Bus Company to have a bus named after Captain Camp!

There have been so many fascinating things that have come from this project and the journey has been an absolute pleasure, from being sent Robin Tasker’s childhood scrapbooks from 1950, to Denise Halls donating the Club’s first Minutes book and working with the fantastic team of volunteers who have helped shape the archives into something that can be properly accessed at the East Sussex Record Office. I am so grateful to have been able to meet with so many interesting members of Brighton Swimming Club, to have been able to record people who have passed away since this project was completed, and also to have been given three wonderful scrapbooks that were created by Keith Marlton. These contained the image that has become iconic in this project – the men in top hats (see Fig 31).

For me, swimming has brought about so many memories for people, and it is amazing to think that if I hadn’t gone in the sea one day for a dip, these memories would still be sat in boxes in the basement of Brighton Museum. Being a graphic designer, this project has also made me think about how our own personal archives, stored on computers and mobile phones, will be accessed in 150 years time, and how the archives of Brighton Swimming Club will be represented.

This catalogue is an attempt to tell a story of the Brighton Swimming Club through its archives and using first-hand accounts and memories from interviews. It is not complete, but if you wish to see it in the flesh, then take a visit to the East Sussex Record Office and witness the wonder of it all.

pAuL fARRInGTOnFloating MeMories DireCtor

6 Student postcard, Edward Chaverton, 2012. 7 Permanent exhibition, Brighton Swimming Club, Brighton Fishing Museum.

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Brighton Swimming Club was established at a meeting on 4th May 1860 at the Jolly Fisherman Inn, 35 Market Street, where the founding members were George Brown, ‘Captain’ John Henry Camp, Charles Hindley, J Nyren, William Patching, R Ward and George Worsley. The history of the Club in the 1910 gala programme says:

That these gentlemen were modest in their demands must be admitted, when it is realised that the entrance fee was fixed at 1/- and the subscription 2d. weekly. Since the membership in the first year, by a coincidence, only numbered 13, and there was no accommodation for undressing, one would have expected the Club to have died in its infancy, but, the founders were determined to maintain it on a firm basis. If Committee meetings form any criterion, the point must be conceded, since no less than 31 were held during 1860.

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The second of those weekly meetings took place on 11th May, when the members present were Messrs Ward, Patching, Nyren, Worsley, Ensor and Captain Camp with C Hindley as Honorary Secretary. They firstly resolved that the society be called the Brighton Swimming Club and have for its object the encouragement of swimming; secondly, that Mr Henry Camp be called ‘Captain’ and be Chairman of the society; and thirdly that Mr C Hindley be appointed Treasurer and Secretary.

The Jolly Fisherman was closed in 1939 and subsequently demolished – one of the many ghostly addresses in this story, swept away with 20th-century redevelopment. Some of the founding members are as elusive as their former homes but we get glimpses of a group of men who were dedicated to the art of swimming, who were themselves not only strong swimmers, but who also enjoyed the showmanship involved in entertaining others with their skills, exhibiting a relish for comic effect.

Where we have been able to establish the occupations of some of the founding members of Brighton Swimming Club, we find businesses that thrived in the growing town of Brighton, flourishing as a seaside resort, with visitors and commuters making use of the railway opened in 1841, and calling on the services of builders and paperhangers, the drapers and booksellers in North Street, the china and glass merchants at the junction of West Street and Upper Russell Street, and everywhere looking for amusement from the swimming matches and entertainments organised by the old Chain Pier and later, the West Pier.

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8 The Chain Pier featured in the Brighton Swimming Club’s early history, when competitions were held at the public bathing ground between the eastern and western tollhouses at 6.00am. It provided a landing place for passengers and goods arriving by sea. The platform was suspended from the tops of four A-shaped Egyptian-style cast-iron towers and was popular with promenaders.

9 35 Market Street, the Jolly Fisherman Inn, c. 1938.10 An account of the first meeting of Brighton Swimming Club, held at the Jolly Fisherman Inn, 4th May 1860. AMS 6946/2/1

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GeORGe BROWn Starting alphabetically with George Brown, we encounter the first challenge. There were nine adults named George Brown recorded in the 1861 Census for Brighton, but fortunately the Club history booklet, 1860–1923, mentions that he died in 1893, the same year as another founder member, Charles Hindley. Since there was only one George Brown to die in Brighton that year, it’s possible to find out from his death certificate that he was 72 years old, a bird fancier by occupation, and that he died at home in the presence of his son at 111 North Street on 1st October.

The Club history produced to coincide with the 1910 Grand Jubilee gala notes that George Brown was known for his somersaults using hand and foot blades, the former preserved in the Club Arch. The writer of the history said:

‘Many of the present members recollect Mr Brown as being a happy, genial and kindly hearted gentleman. He was one of the founders and remained a member until his death.’ The earliest Committee Minutes record him as taking the chair at least once, so he was an active member. Apparently, the history continues, ‘it was his habit to wear galoshes, which and with other effects gave him when in the water an Oriental appearance’.

Tracing George Brown back through Census returns, we find that he was born in Chichester about 1822, and he ran his business as a bird fancier and cage maker from at least 1861 at the same address in North Street. A bird fancier is not an occupation familiar to us today, but was popular in Victorian times, especially in towns and cities, where caged small birds like thrushes, bullfinches, goldfinches, larks and linnets were sold and often prized for their song.

My grandmother’s grandfather had been a founder member in 1860. He was one of the handful of North Street tradesmen who re-appropriated the beach in the name of Brighton’s ordinary people. They were in the water literally for what they could learn through exploring the link between action and understanding. That movement of self-improvement was taken almost as given, that one could develop one’s conceptual powers almost indefinitely.

dAVId SAWYeRS Born 1941


11 Brighton Swimming Club history booklet, 1860–1923. AMS 6946/13/1 12 Swimming, The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes, 1893.

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‘CApTAIn’ JOhn henRY CAMp Captain Camp was perhaps the most extraordinary of the seven men who established the Club for the purpose of teaching and encouraging the useful art of swimming. However, you will find no reference to him in any of the books about Brighton nor any public memorial. The title

‘Captain’ was either a nickname, maybe a reference to his time at sea and perhaps an affectionate nod towards his appearance and manner, or the name accorded to his role in the newly formed club. Either way, he retained the title even after he relinquished his post.

The details of his life are sparse but we know he was the eldest son of John and Maria, and was born in Newhaven in 1826, where his parents worked as grocers. So his origins were humble, and by the age of 14 we find him working as an apprentice to Charles Corder, a linen draper in North Street, Brighton. Some time later he went to sea where he met with an accident, falling from a mast, after which his leg was amputated. His seafaring days over, he returned to Brighton and worked as a draper’s assistant and part-time swimming instructor for the Brighton Swimming Club and Brill’s Baths. We know his parents fell on hard times, his mother and younger brother Alfred being taken into the Newhaven poorhouse. His father, according to one story, lived in a cave. We have discovered that Captain Camp’s widowed mother later moved to Brighton where she lodged at Claremont Place. 1861 Census information tells us that the unmarried John Henry Camp was lodging in Devonshire Street.

The history for 1860 and 1861 includes the following advertisement inserted in a newspaper, headed ‘BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB’ (see Fig 16, top right). ‘Parents desirous of having their sons taught swimming, are respectfully informed that the members of the Brighton Swimming Club, who are all expert and experienced swimmers, undertake to teach the art complete for the sum of FIVE SHILLINGS. The members assemble every morning, before Eight o’clock, to bathe in the open sea from the beach, between Anscombe’s and Wright’s Groyne, King’s-road. For further particulars, apply to Capt. Camp, any morning between six and eight, at the Bathing Place, or at his residence, 6, Devonshire-street.’ The advertisement concludes with offering ‘Capt. Camp’s Patent Bathing Drawers, 3s per pair. Capt. Camp’s Cork Mattress – Pro Bono Publico. Capt. Camp’s Swimming Class every morning.’ Ten years later, as a teacher of swimming, he was married to Eliza, and they were living in Kensington Gardens with their nine-year-old son Charles. His role as Captain and Swimming Master of the Brighton Swimming Club lasted until 1866 when he accepted an engagement at Brill’s Baths. Mr Hood took over his position at the first meeting for the season, held at Mr Payne’s Marine Hotel, when the whole of the officers were reappointed, according to the report in the Sussex Advertiser of 19th May 1866. Captain Camp had served as the first President of the Club in 1860, as Captain in 1860, 1861, 1862 and again from 1872–1873 according to the history in the 1910 Jubilee gala programme.

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13 A programme of swimming matches, aquatic entertainments and events that took place between 7.00 and 8.00am on the 19th September 1862 for the benefit of Captain Camp. AMS 6946/2/3

By coincidence, Captain Camp was not alone in gaining fame as a one-legged swimmer. The earliest scrapbook for the club contains a letter published in the Brighton Observer in 1860, from Charles Moore, Professional Swimmer to the London Swimming Club, concerning a recent visit to Brighton. ‘I will conclude with respects to Captain Camp, who like myself, is minus a fin, and is, as I found, a jolly good fellow, and as he, with only one leg, has been the means of saving a fellow-creature’s life, I hope he may never be seen hopping to the Workhouse with the other.’ Charles Moore suggests that there might be a performance between himself and Captain Camp, but of this there is no record.

Teaching swimming in the sea was not without its dangers, which may have persuaded Captain Camp to seek safer waters. The Sussex Advertiser carried the following report on Saturday 21st October 1865. ‘ACCIDENT. – An accident has occurred to Captain Camp, a popular member of the Brighton Swimming Club. On Saturday, he was teaching a female pupil the art of swimming at Jeffery’s machines eastward of the Chain Pier, when his leg – he has but one leg – struck against a rock and was lacerated in such a manner that his removal to the Hospital was necessary.’

Captain Camp was unusual in becoming a swimmer since most working-class boys, in the mid-19th century, did not learn to swim, even those who went to sea or worked as fishermen. Contemporary Brighton newspapers carried many reports of drownings off the Sussex coastline and this was one of the reasons for the foundation of the Brighton Swimming Club. Captain Camp competed in club races and performed to the crowds who flocked to watch these aquatic shows, the seaside equivalent of the circus. Contemporary reports describe him as a marine acrobat, one particular trick being to undress in the water whilst smoking a pipe.

Sadly, Captain Camp succumbed to a common 19th-century disease – consumption – which was rife in the overcrowded North Laine area of Brighton, where he lived. It is ironic that Brighton’s reputation as a resort was based on its health-giving properties, of which seabathing was an important part. Close to death, Captain Camp was living in poverty when he was discharged from hospital to go home to die at 28 Jubilee Street. Charles Moore’s comment about the workhouse, quoted above, may have been realised. The only income he and his wife Eliza had were her earnings of 15 shillings a week as a bath attendant. However, Captain Camp was not forgotten by the Brighton Swimming Club. A fund was set up to support him in his final illness and subsequently a headstone was erected in his memory at the Extra-Mural Cemetery where he was buried in the same grave as his mother. The inscription read, according to a newspaper report: ‘This tombstone was erected by the Brighton Swimming Club to the memory of their old steward, John Henry Camp, the celebrated one-legged swimmer, born July 31st 1826, died in Brighton, December 28th 1875, aged 49 years. I dare the waves, a life to save.’


14 Newspaper cutting, The Brighton Gazette 30th December 1875. AMS 6946/5/4

15 ‘Captain’ John Henry Camp, depicted in a carte-de-visite portrait, 1872. AMS 6946/14/2214

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16 A selection of newspaper cuttings collected by Charles Hindley. Brighton Swimming Club scrapbook 1860. AMS 6946/5/1

ChARLeS hIndLeYCharles Hindley was the first Honorary Secretary of the Club – a role he performed for several years according to the list of Principal Officers in the 1910 gala programme – and also acted as Treasurer, undertaking many initiatives that were to influence the history of swimming in Brighton and beyond. Born about 1821 in Clerkenwell, London, Charles Hindley was recorded as a bookseller at 41 North Street in the 1861 Census. Ten years later we find him retired at the age of 50 and now living at Rosehill Terrace, which was built in the early 1850s and suffered bomb damage in the Second World War. By the time of his death in 1893, at the age of 72, he was living in Prince Albert Street.

Charles Hindley was responsible for keeping the first scrapbook for the Club, the source of much valuable information about its history. The report on the Annual Match for 1862, records: ‘There also was the indefatigable Hon. Sec. (Mr. C. Hindley), arranging the competitors in their proper order, dealing out drawers – for it must be perfectly understood that no-one was allowed to compete without wearing those inexpressibles – and answering thousands of questions put by troublesome reporters and the interested public.’ Hindley acted as starter for swimming matches, like that recorded in the Sussex Advertiser in July 1865 between the Brighton Swimming Club and the Avon Rowing Club, where he was responsible for firing the starter pistol for a race from the fourth groyne to a flag placed under the Chain Pier, ‘upon which several hundred persons congregated, and upon the cliff and beach there could not be less than ten thousand persons’.

We know from the Brighton Swimming Club archive that, in 1862, Charles Hindley was in discussions with the Mayor about the provision of public baths because so few boys in Brighton could swim. The following year, Committee Minutes of April 27th 1863 noted a resolution that ‘Messrs Mowbray and Hindley wait on Mr Craven at the Railway Works respecting the purchasing [of ] a carriage suitable for a Bathing House and report to the next meeting’. His generosity was noted in the logbook for 1863, when he presented the Club with a thermometer and a cork skrew [sic] on 27th June, although sadly a note the following month suggests that the first did not survive (‘Who broke the thermometer?’). Charles Hindley was responsible for the letter to the Sussex Daily News in 1875, appealing for financial support in aid of Captain Camp, who was dying of consumption.

J nYRen Mr Nyren is currently a mystery and can’t be found in Census records for 1871 or 1861. Ten years earlier, in 1851, we can find an 18-year old John Nyren, born in Brighton, who was living with his parents and six younger siblings at 30 Tidy Street, earning his living as a painter. Is this the same man? Is he related to the firm Nyren & Pryke, milliners and artificial florists of 19 Western Road, mentioned in an 1891 street directory? The tenth Committee meeting of the Brighton Swimming Club resolved, on 13th July 1860, that Mr Wm Nyren become a member. Were they brothers? Intriguingly, the inside cover of the Minutes book for 1860 is inscribed ‘London and County Bank, W. Nyren, 15 Kingsbury Road (Baker Street)’. All we can discover at the moment is that J Nyren was sufficiently active in the early days of the Club that he attended the first meeting and became, with Messrs Ward, Ensor and Worsley, a member of the Bye Law Committee.

WILLIAM pATChInGWilliam Patching may be the paperhanger we can trace from the 1861 Census and through street directories. If this is the same William Patching who helped to found the Brighton Swimming Club, then he was born about 1813 in Brighton. Married first to Mary, who bore him three sons, he then married Ann and, with a family growing to four more boys, continued to list his occupation as paperhanger until his late 70s. He lived for over 30 years in Portland Street, where the family business continued to function until the 1950s. The Minutes of 1860 show that he took the chair at least once during the early Committee meetings.

17 Poster advertising a Grand Soiree at the Town Hall, 28th March 1864. AMS 6946/2/318 Title page from a Treatise on Swimming, collected in a Brighton Swimming Club scrapbook, 1860. AMS 6946/5/1


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R WARdMr Ward is also elusive in the official records, although the Brighton Swimming Club archive has two mentions of him. The first is a letter to a newspaper dated 2nd August 1860, pasted into a scrapbook containing various cuttings related to the teaching of swimming, with reports of narrow escapes from drowning and the early activities of the Club and its members. This extract from an unspecified newspaper is headed ‘Mr Brill’s Dolly’ and reads: ‘SIR – I beg to inform you that I got injured whilst bathing on Tuesday morning last, opposite Mr Brill’s Baths, upon the dolly (if that is the name of it) placed there, I am told, to supply Brill’s Baths with sea water. I hope Mr Brill or the Town Authorities will cause a buoy or flag to be raised from it to prevent perhaps fatal accidents. If you will name this or insert my note in your valuable paper you will receive my thanks. I am sir, yours truly, R. WARD. No. 1 Brighton Swimming Club.’

The second mention, in a book containing notes of meetings from 1863 and 1864, is a reference to ‘The Club Drawers manufactured by Mr Ward, one of the Members, and supplied through the Committee at 3s per pair’. So was Mr R Ward a draper? The first page of accounts in the 1860 Minutes book lists Mr Ward’s name, amongst the income and expenditure, against ‘2 pr drawers for five shillings’, sold at a profit. The Minutes of the first meeting of the Club, on 4th May 1860, record: ‘That all Members be compelled to wear Bathing Drawers made in a uniform manner and that Mr Ward supply a sample pair for the inspection of the Club on Friday Evening next.’ Mr Ward was named as a member for the Bye Law Committee at that same meeting, and the rules from 1863 show that he was still a Committee member.


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GeORGe WORSLeYFortunately George Worsley, an early Treasurer of the Brighton Swimming Club, and for many years a Vice President, has a stronger paper trail. He was a china and glass merchant, born about 1835, and living to the age of 76, so able to witness the Jubilee gala in 1910. Like Mr Ward, George Brown and Captain Camp, George Worsley was a strong swimmer. The report of the swimming matches in the Sussex Advertiser on Tuesday 12th September 1865 record that in the ninth contest for officers of the Brighton Swimming Club over 300yd (c. 274m), G Worsley came second to Captain Camp, the winner. Earlier in the programme, ‘which took place at the public bathing station near the west entrance of the Chain Pier, with the attendant advantages of charming weather and a remarkably tranquil sea’, it was noted that Mr Worsley, ‘caused considerable amusement by the performance of various airs on the concertina, also by reading a newspaper, both feats being performed whilst floating on his back’.

In 1863, George Worsley was living at 35 Duke Street, when he was Treasurer of the Club. The Census returns record his prosperity; he moved from Egremont Place to West Street, where he employed five men and a boy in 1871. By 1881 he had moved to Queens Road, which was built in the 1840s to accommodate the traffic from the recently opened railway station, with his china and glass warehouse at the junction of West Street and Upper Russell Street. Upper Russell Street was cleared in the 1960s to make way for the Churchill Square development. By 1891 the family was living in Queens Square and 10 years later they were at 77 Round Hill Crescent, the address where George Worsley was to die in the presence of his daughter.

The 1910 gala programme records not only George Worsley’s long service to the Club – acting as Treasurer from 1863 to 1866, again in 1880 and 1884, and serving as Honorary Secretary in 1880 as well – but also his generosity. When the aquarium was erected in 1870, the Club lost its bathing sheds and many members left, but Mr Worsley remained loyal. During a period of financial problems for the Club in the late 1870s and early 1880s, due to the cost of fitting out new headquarters, he was one of two members who reduced the claims owing them, enabling the Club to revive its fortunes. JudY WOOdMAn Floating MeMories volunteer


19 George Worsley details historical events on Brighton Swimming Club in a letter to Club Treasurer Louis Meaden, 9th May 1910. AMS 6946/16/1 20 Portrait of George Worsley, taken from the 50th anniversary gala programme of Brighton Swimming Club, 8th October 1910. AMS 6946/7/1 21 A receipt for the purchase of four hairbrushes and four combs by Brighton Swimming Club member George Worsley, 14th May 1881. AMS 6946/11/1


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22 Club badge, 1860.23 Club badge, 1861. 24 A cutting from the Brighton Observer records the results of Brighton Swimming Club sea races, 14th September 1860. AMS 6946/16/1

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In 1862, a small tool house and two Parliamentary railway carriages were used as a Club room, placed at the eastern end of the Brighton Aquarium. They were situated between Ratty’s tollhouse and the Chain Pier (now the Sea Life Centre), on which a red flag with the letters ‘B. S. C.’ was raised. The interior was papered and lined in oak. Looking glasses, hat pegs, combs, towels, bathing drawers, life buoys, swimming mattresses and lifelines were all arranged, ready for its members to use. Outside was a white boat with the Club’s name painted on each side.


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25 Second-class railway carriage, 1863. 26 A programme of swimming matches that offered prizes in the form of cash, thermometers, cigar cases and books, 22nd August 1861. AMS 6946/2/3

27 This fragment from a poster advertises the benefits of joining Brighton Swimming Club for the season of 1862. AMS 6946/5/1


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28 Newspaper report titled ‘Two Hours With The Brighton Swimming Club’, 1862. AMS 6946/16/2


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29 Sea bathing logbook recording weather conditions, numbers of bathers on the beach, numbers of members present and notes on other occurrences, 1863. AMS 6946/15/1

30 Minutes book detailing members’ payments received in May 1863. AMS 6946/2/3


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One of Brighton Swimming Club’s primary objectives, when it was established, was to teach and encourage the art of swimming, and to award prizes at public matches.

31 Rules of Brighton Swimming Club, May 1863.


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There is a question over what year this photograph was taken. A connection with Brighton Swimming Club Minute books from 1863 shows that it might be a photograph taken by Benjamin Botham as early as 1863. Notes in the Committee Minutes from 2nd June 1863 state that they let a new member be admitted ‘on condition of his taking a photographic sketch of the members of the Club’. Another clue can be found in a poster dated 3rd August 1863, which advertises that a prize would be given to winners of swimming matches, in the form of a photograph of members of Brighton Swimming Club taken by Benjamin Botham.

32 Brighton Swimming Club, albumen print by Benjamin Botham, 1863. AMS 6946/2/333 Minute taken from Brighton Swimming Club Minutes book, 2nd June 1863. AMS 6946/2/3 34 An engraving taken from a photographic portrait by Benjamin Botham of Western Road, Brighton, depicting the ‘Champion Swimmer of Brighton’, Frederick Cavill (1839–1927), The Illustrated Sporting News, 20th August 1864.35 Handbill advertising the Club’s fourth annual swimming matches. The winners of the fifth and eighth matches were given, as an additional prize, a photograph by Benjamin Botham of Brighton Swimming Club members, 3rd May 1863. AMS 6946/9/2


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Promenading was a serious social business in late-19th-century Brighton. The pier head at the end of the West Pier contained weather screens and continuous inward-facing seating for hundreds of individuals who enjoyed both watching and being watched. But it didn’t suit everyone.

‘This is the order and custom of pier promenading’, grumbled the naturalist Richard Jeffries. ‘You are to stalk along the deck until you reach the end, and there you go round and round the band [stand] in a circle like a horse tethered to an iron pin, or else sit down and admire those who do go round and round.’ Regrettably, he had not noticed that there were other things to do at the end of the West Pier – and other things to see.

The enlargement of the pier head in 1893 resulted in a conscious effort by its owners to entice visitors into the sea. A press report from May of that year commented on the ‘bathing facilities which are afforded at the head of the Pier from which a dip in the briny can be indulged in daily from six till eleven am’. Over 10,000 people used ‘the long range of bathing rooms, fitted internally with every convenience . . . with special rooms for members of clubs’ in the six months leading up to August 1893. Steps led to a deep sea bathing station and diving area, complete with high diving boards and tiered seating – an area for spectacle and serious swimmers alike. Here you could swim straight into deep water, although by the time Brighton Swimming Club members arrived at 9.00am, you had to be wearing

‘a becoming bathing costume’.

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The West Pier Company and Brighton Swimming Club negotiated an agreement whereby the Company provided the Club with changing rooms, toilets and showers, in return for the Club providing ‘free of charge to the Company not less than 16 public exhibitions of swimming and polo matches’. Between 1890 and 1915, therefore, the pier head was the scene of swimming fêtes, competitions and diving displays, with onlookers packed along the whole east side of the pier.

In 1893 the Sussex County Water Polo Association hosted its annual fête by welcoming 20 other clubs to the West Pier. They competed for certificates, medals and the Loder and Welling cups. A written review of the day’s successes mentioned a founding member, Mr George Brown, ‘who is particularly remembered for the somersaults he constantly performed in the water when he used hand and foot blades, the former still being preserved in the Club Arch’. In 1868, Captain Camp, the one-legged swimmer and founder member of Brighton Swimming Club had ‘prepared and partaken of breakfast on the water’, whilst a colleague had performed ‘airs upon the Concertina, and read the Daily Paper whilst lying on the water’. Between the races at the West Pier’s Annual Festival in 1893 were held various entertainments including an ‘Aquatic Tea Party’, a ‘Grand Water Costume Polo Match’, ‘Boxing on the Raft’,

‘Sea Horses’, and ‘An Exhibition of Torpedo and Porpoise Swimming by Mr F Miles’.

36 West Pier, photo by Edward Fox c. 1870 © The James Gray Collection / The Regency Society.37 Handbill, West Pier Aquatic Entertainment, 1878. AMS 6946/5/6 38 Handbill, West Pier Aquatic Entertainment, 14th September 1877. AMS 6946/5/6

On 6th July 1893, Brighton Swimming Club held ‘Aquatic Sports’ from the West Pier to celebrate the royal wedding of George, Duke of York (the future King George V) and Princess Mary (May) of Teck. Programmes cost one penny and swimmers were required to wear ‘university costumes’. Three years later, the fifth Brighton Ladies’ Swimming Club Annual Fête featured a Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Open Handicap and a ‘Flying Squadron’ race open to gentlemen, and finished up with a greasy pole competition, a water polo match and a high dive. There were cash prizes for the greasy pole competition at the Club’s Annual Festival on the pier in August 1907; ten shillings for the first prize, seven shillings and sixpence for second, and five shillings for third. Ladies’ prizes were above filthy lucre: a gold heart (first), a butter dish (second) and 12 silver buttons (third).

Diving from the end of the West Pier was always a crowd-puller, whether one went to see the theatrical Professor Reddish, Professor Cyril or the Aquamaniac, who dived from as high as 30ft (9m), often using props such as bicycles; or the glamorous female divers, who could pose for photographs displaying legs and curves in a way unthinkable to their non-swimming contemporaries. Zoe Brigden and Gladys Powsey dived from the pier during the 1920s and 1930s. Zoe Brigden was a professional swimming champion before a shoulder injury ended her career. Her signature act was the ‘wooden soldier’ dive for which she plunged in head first with arms by her sides. Gladys Powsey imitated the movements and noises of a swimming seal. Outside the peak season she performed on stage as a dancer and contortionist. Leonard Goldman, who holidayed in Brighton as a child during the 1920s, remembers: ‘an Amazonian woman in a bathing costume and a bathing gown parading along the top of the pier exclaiming, “Any more for the diving at the pool at the end of the pier?”. She really was a remarkable diver. The diving board was at a great height, much higher than the current Olympic one. Or was that just in my childish imagination?’

The last great diver from the West Pier was The Great Omani, local man Ron Cunningham who, in the 1960s, would plunge into the sea wrapped in chains, or dive into a fireball.

In 1913 the owners of the Palace Pier invested in a ‘palatial’ bathing station that cost £6,000. ‘Shining white’ and ‘highly polished’ facilities, together with several rafts ‘specially buoyed up to carry as many swimmers who will clamber upon them’, meant the days of the West Pier’s bathing station were numbered. Public swimming and diving from the West Pier continued, but Brighton Swimming Club was quick to take advantage of the generous terms and facilities offered and transferred its festivals and fêtes to the Palace Pier. LIndSeY TYdeMAn Floating MeMories volunteer


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39 Poster advertising swimming matches at the Central Bathing Station, 3rd August 1868. Following the Round the Pier race, Captain Camp prepared and had his breakfast on the water. Prizes included a handsome concertina, a silver-plated tea pot and even a cask of ale. AMS 6946/9/540 Poster advertising the annual fête, 3rd September 1874. AMS 6946/9/6 41 Poster advertising swimming matches and aquatic sports at the West Pier, 9th September 1875. AMS 6946/942 Poster advertising aquatic entertainment at the head of the West Pier, 14th September 1877. AMS 6946/9


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43 Newspaper cutting from the Brighton Examiner, 7th September 1877. AMS 6946/5/4

44 Brighton West Pier, official programme of aquatic entertainment, 18th September 1878. AMS 6946/5/6

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In 1870 the Club lost its facilities due to the aquarium being built. In May 1872, the Brighton Gazette reported that the Town Council granted Brighton Swimming Club the use of a large arch underneath the aquarium road, known as the ‘Hole in the Wall’, close to the groyne at the Old Pier public bathing place. This arch, 20ft long by 14ft wide (c. 6 × 4.25m), was fitted with every requisite: a table in the centre, hooks and looking glasses. Captain Camp, the celebrated one-legged swimmer and expert waterman, was invariably on duty there, and was always pleased to greet any of his old friends or pupils. In 1872, the Club assumed the title The Brighton Aquarium Swimming Club, but it reverted to its original name the following year.

It was a bleak old place the Hole in the Wall. It was very near the Palace Pier. It was a cold dressing room; very dampish.

dICK ReeVeS Born 1916

hOLe In The WALL

45 Club members outside the ‘Hole in the Wall’ changing room, c. 1928. hatmp900977_d01 46 Club members outside the ‘Hole in the Wall’ changing room, c. 1928. Courtesy of Toni Bonner. 47 Newspaper cuttings, 1872. AMS 6946/5/4

1872–1931

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taken from an interview made on the 13th october 2011


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Club members would meet early in the morning, between the hours of 6.00 and 8.00am, because the town’s bye-laws only permitted bathing without the use of a bathing machine between these hours. At that time it was the custom to bathe in the nude. The Club provided its members with bathing drawers (trunks) to make them respectable.

48 Newspaper cutting describing Club members eating breakfast in the sea on a raft, Brighton Daily News, 18th July 1874. AMS 6946/5/4

49 Poster advertising Brighton Swimming Club’s bathing times and subscription rates, May 1876. AMS 6946/9/7

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Standing on the western side of the Grand Hotel, in a position now occupied by the hotel ballroom, were the Royal Artillery Baths. The ground floor was used by gentlemen and the first floor by ladies. From 1878 onwards, Brighton Swimming Club held winter swimming races at Hobden’s Royal Artillery Baths, with members having to wear club drawers (costumes). Cash prizes were awarded, as was a special china jug! The evening would usually end with an exhibition race between two swimmers.

When the Grand Hotel was built, the baths were rebuilt with an entrance direct from the hotel as well as the street. In 1980 the original swimming pool remained concealed under the floor of the hotel ballroom, but following a bombing in 1984, the original swimming pool was lost.

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50 Handbill, 30th January 1878. AMS 6946/5/6 51 Programme of the Monthly Handicap Competition, 23rd January 1878. AMS 6946/5/6 52 Royal Swimming Bath for Ladies. 53 Hobden’s Royal Baths, courtesy of David Ransom.

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54 An Aquatic Tea-Party at Brighton, The Graphic, 1881.

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Members of the Brighton Swimming Club entertain the crowds gathered on Brighton’s West Pier by holding a tea party on a wooden raft. Some of the men swim out to the raft, but others attempt to reach the refreshments by riding wooden horses made from barrels. The man on the raft pouring the tea is believed to be John Hawgood (1844–1896), a clothier and furniture dealer of North Road, Brighton. Hawgood was a local swimming champion who went on to become the Honorary Secretary of the Brighton Swimming Club in 1886. The ‘Aquatic Tea-Party at Brighton’ was a traditional event that had been staged near the West Pier since the 1860s. dAVId SIMKInSwww.photohistory-sussex.co.uk


55 Newspaper cutting, Brighton Guardian, 19th September 1877. AMS 6946/5/5 56 Poster advertising aquatic entertainment at the West Pier, Brighton, 16th August 1884. AMS 6946/9/12

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The 50th Anniversary gala programme for Brighton Swimming Club, published in 1910, makes reference to social events that were held in the Club Arch in the winter months. The winter bathers first began in small numbers, around 1885, and steadily increased. In 1890 there were 12 regular bathers. The Christmas morning handicap in the sea was also instituted at this time.

57 Prospective Arctic Explorers—The Winter Bathers, Brighton Swimming Club, 20th March 1909. AMS 6946/7/1 58 A Christmas Tale, c. 1930s.

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Members of the Brighton Swimming Club photographed by Norman & Co. outside their clubhouse at No. 231 King’s Road Arches in March 1891. In 1893 the arches on Brighton seafront were renumbered and the address of the headquarters of the Brighton Swimming Club was changed from No. 231 to No. 266. Around 1900, the numbers on the arches near the new Palace Pier were changed once again, with the headquarters becoming Arch No. 274.

The older men in the centre are some of the founder members of the Brighton Swimming Club, which had been formally established on 4th May 1860. The bewhiskered gentleman who sits in the middle row, wearing a light-coloured coat and soft felt hat, is George Brown.

The man in the centre of the picture appears to be Leonard Reuben (Robert) Styer (1843–1932), a dentist who served as the President of the Club from 1880 until 1931. Leonard Reuben Styer, who was born on 23rd March 1843 in Northampton, the son of Abraham Styer, a German Jew, established a dental practice at 26 Old Steine, Brighton, in 1878.

John Hawgood (1844–1896), a London-born furniture dealer, was a swimming champion and Captain of the Club during the early 1880s. John Hawgood was the Honorary Secretary of the Club between 1886 and 1888. The policeman is present as he was a member of the club at the time.

dAVId SIMKInSwww.photohistory-sussex.co.uk

59 Club rules, Brighton Swimming Club, 1891. AMS 6946 60 Club badge, c. 1890. 61 Norman & Co, The Winter Bathers of the Brighton Swimming Club, 21st March 1891. AMS 6946/14/23

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North Road Baths was built with little, if any, consideration for racing distance. It had a 4in [10cm] metal scum channel fixed to the end of the pool. A scum channel, or trough, was one of the earliest systems for removing pollutants from the pool surface, but it also served as a place for swimmers to hold onto at the edge. Since most competitors were still using the ‘grab turn’ when they reached the end of the pool, it was very difficult not to use the scum channel to turn, but competition rules stated that each length had to be completed by touching the wall with one’s hand. By turning on the scum channel, a competitor was not completing the full distance and would be disqualified.

The North Road Baths were closed for the winter, and the pool was drained of water. When it was filled again in the spring it had to be filled over seven days or it would empty the local reservoir!

neIL TASKeR Born 1938

62 Brighton Swimming Club, winners of all divisions of the Sussex County Water Polo League, North Road Baths, 1926. From 1920, Brighton Swimming Club was the most successful in the County Water Polo Championships. AMS 6946/14 63 North Road Baths, 28th June 1978.64 Newspaper cutting, Sussex Daily News, 29th April 1903. AMS 6946/2/13

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65 Poster, Brill’s Baths, 23rd June 1896.66 Programmes, North Road Baths, various dates.


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In those days it was North Road Baths, and it’s fair to say I had an absolutely meteoric improvement in my training.

In my first year, Brighton Swimming Club had these wonderful handicap races and I cleared the trophy cabinet. I can remember the first cup I took home, my mother was reasonably pleased, but when I brought the second one home . . . ‘Who’s going to clean that?’ I was eating her out of house and home at the time as well.

As I grew in confidence, I would certainly have been one of the people who jumped off the railings on the first floor into the pool, when no-one was looking. Life was definitely fun in those days.

MIChAeL ReAd Born 1941taken from an interview made on the 23rd august 2012

67 Balcony at the North Road Baths, courtesy of Denise Halls. 68 Diving at the North Road Baths, c. 1950s. AMS 6946/14/2469 Newspaper cutting, courtesy of Denise Halls, 1979.

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The biggest changes I have seen are losing North Road swimming pool. That was actually very sad at the time even though it was nice to move on and have a modern swimming pool.

denISe hALLS Born 1951taken from an interview made on the 9th March 2012

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Built as the Palace Pier for the Brighton Marine Palace & Pier Company it was renamed Brighton Pier in 2000 by the Noble Organisation, which had purchased the pier in 1984. The Palace Pier was used as a sports venue for the Brighton Swimming Club from 1900. The pier was an instant success, with an illuminated archway, decking and kiosks. It was later enlarged with a landing stage and pier-head pavilion, and underwent many other changes and repairs during its history. Musgrave describes ‘an atmosphere of slightly raffish gaiety that was quite different from that of the West Pier’. JudY WOOdMAn Floating MeMories volunteer

70 Postcard, Palace Pier, 1905.71 Programme, Grand Aquatic Festival, 28th June 1913.72 Poster advertising the 54th Annual Brighton Swimming Club Festival, 10th July 1913. AMS 6946

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73–75 Photograph showing Club members east of the Palace Pier, 1910.

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76 Photograph showing Club members east of the Palace Pier, 1912.

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77 Poster advertising Brighton Swimming Club’s 54th Annual Festival, 10th July 1913. AMS 6946/9/18 78 Newspaper cuttings, 1913. AMS 6946/5/8

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As the Club’s fame and influence grew, the events became more prestigious, like the 100yd English championship and the International Water Polo match of England vs. Wales in 1913.

79 Ticket for Brighton Swimming Club’s Grand Gala, 20th September 1913. AMS 6946/9/2180 Clock face mounted on cardboard designed to show ticket sales counting down to the Brighton Swimming Club’s Grand Gala, 20th September 1913. AMS 6946/9/2281 Poster advertising Brighton Swimming Club’s Grand Gala, 20th September 1913. AMS 6946/9/19

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81 Newspaper cutting, The Sportsman Sporting News, 22nd September 1913. AMS 6946/5/482 Illustration from The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 27th September 1913. AMS 6946/5/4

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83 Poster advertising Brighton Swimming Club’s Grand Gala in celebration of its Diamond Jubilee, 25th September 1920. AMS 6946/9/24 84 Brighton Swimming Club water polo team, 1907. AMS 6946 85 Brighton Swimming Club water polo senior team, 1911 AMS 6946 86 Brighton Swimming Club, Winners of the Sussex Life Saving Championship, 1924. AMS 6946

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We came across the Brighton Swimming Club memorabilia at the Brighton Fishing Museum, and the photo of swimmers in the snow with the Palace Pier in the background. This is one of my family photographs as the tallest man with the black slick of hair was my father. He was 21 in 1929. His name was Albert George Allen, known as George. His nickname was Tank. He played in a water polo team. At the outbreak of war he was paymaster at Tamplins Brewery in Kemp Town. He died tragically early in May 1945.

His brother, younger by 10 years, was Douglas Frederick Allen, known as Fred. He also played water polo and was a very strong swimmer, and I am sure he would have taken part in the Pier to Pier race. He came back from the war and was my father figure. He died in 1995.

I was six when my father died and as he had been away at war I can only remember a thin tall man, not the 14-stone boxer he must have been. Thank you for bringing him alive for me. eLIZABeTh MARY BROWn (née ALLen)taken from an email received on the 2nd December 2012

87 Photograph showing Club members east of the Palace Pier, January 1929. AMS 6946/14/28 88 Hardy swimmers, 2nd December 2010 © Kevin Meredith.

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SS Brighton began as the largest covered indoor sea- water swimming pool in the world, measuring 165 ¬ 60ft (c. 50 ¬ 18m). The name and interior was inspired by, and in the style of, an ocean liner. Swimming competitions and bathing-beauty contests were carried out for a year, until it was converted into an ice skating rink and sports stadium. As an ice rink, the SS Brighton presented shows on ice and was home to the Brighton Tigers Ice Hockey Team. In 1959 the building was relaunched and staged other attractions, such as variety shows and political conferences, as well as sporting events.

LuCIndA ABeLFloating MeMories volunteer

I used to dive and swim in the SS Brighton. It closed before the war. They froze it over one winter and the Brighton Tigers Ice Hockey team played there and it never opened again.

GeORGe eLeY Born 1918

The SS Brighton was 55yd [c. 50m] long. It had a 10m diving board, two 3m diving boards and two 1m diving boards. I remember Peter Jarlaley, who won the Olympic diving. He gave an exhibition there. They used to give exhibitions on a Sunday. It was a great pool. We had the Hungarian water polo team play there against England. There was a great rivalry between Brighton and the Shiverers. You saw the picture of John Beserg. He won this eagle from Hitler. Hitler refused to present it and so it was displayed in the foyer of the SS Brighton. Later, when it closed, he had it on his mantelpiece.

GeORGe eLeY Born 1918taken from an interview made on the 5th December 2011

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89 The SS Brighton (Sports Stadium) , as it was originally named, in the summer of 1934. 90 Brighton Swimming Club water polo team who defeated the Shiverers in the National Championship at the SS Brighton, 1934. AMS 6946/5/10

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91 Brighton Swimming Club Lifeguards, 1935. 92 Brighton Swimming Club Lifeguards, 1935. 93 Tides, Currents and Beach Safety Notes for Lifeguards, c. 1950.

The formation of the the Beach Lifeguards took place in 1934. This was a unit organised by Tommy White at the request of Brighton Corporation. Its purpose was to patrol the bathing beaches during the summer, and it functioned until the beaches closed in 1940. The distinctive blazers and swimming costumes of the lifeguards became well known on all of the bathing beaches.

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The Black Rock Swimming Pool was one of Brighton’s favourite Art Deco landmarks, located at the very eastern edge of Brighton at the start of the Undercliff Walk. To fill the pool, sea water was filtered through its state-of-the-art ozone sterilisation system. This gave the water a distinctive ‘sparkle’ and was much kinder on the eyes than chlorine. Designed by the borough’s chief engineer, David Edwards, it was opened on August bank holiday weekend in 1936. As part of the opening event, the Brighton Swimming Club played an exhibition water polo match, and models displayed a history of swimwear fashions from 1876 to the modern day (much to the appreciation of the Mayor). The pool was closed for the duration of the Second World War, and was reopened when the beaches were, but it never really recovered. It was finally put to rest permanently in 1978 through a combination of neglect, the development of Brighton Marina and the English summer weather.

dARRen TAffIndeRFloating MeMories volunteer

It was 1947, the war was over, they’d cleared the beaches and they’d reopened the Black Rock Swimming Pool, which was a 50yd [c. 50m] salt-water pool in those days. And my mum got the job of Manageress of the pool, so I naturally fell into the world of swimming. The manager there was a guy called Jock Thompson, who’d been an international. He’d been a Scottish swimmer and he’d given me a bit of coaching, so my mum tells me.

It was a wonderful time of life for me, because that pool was very much a beautiful old Art Deco building. Everybody who was involved with the theatre world went there during the day, and if you can imagine that Brighton had the Hippodrome, had the pier, it had the Theatre Royal, and in Sussex Square where we lived, just above the pool, you had people like Olivier, Bill Owen, Nigel Green living there, so it was quite natural to meet up with all the theatre folk during the day. And of course they loved this little kid who could swim round and get coins off the bottom.

TIM peARCe Born 1939taken from an interview made on the 6th March 2012

94 Postcard, Black Rock Swimming Pool, c. 1930s.95 Tim Pearce, 1940s.

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The Black Rock lido was such a hub, particularly at weekends. They would put on shows, water polo, diving presentations. Arthur Holman, he was a great high board diver. They had a big board there that was amazing. It was about 20ft [6m] high and you dived into about 7ft [2m] of water.

TIM peARCe Born 1939taken from an interview made on the 6th March 2012

For myself and many others, the Black Rock Swimming Pool provided many wonderful memories from the late 1940s on, and a refuge from the pebbles, litter, broken glass and tar on the beaches. Many facilities were offered: swimming and diving in the major pool or pretending to swim in the paddling pool, table tennis, Jokari, restaurant and bar, showers and spacious changing rooms, rock pools at low tide and excellent diving or jumping into the sea from the groyne at high tide. One was lucky if the temperature of the pool water rose above 67˚F [19˚C], but this was hardly a deterrent. Many regulars made the pilgrimage to the ‘Brighton Riviera’. In summer, I accompanied my parents every weekend. The pool was managed by Jock Thompson who was a keen supporter of swimming and water polo. Every Sunday afternoon, the pool would be cleared for displays by champion swimmers, for example, Julian Tasker and Angela Barnwell, and keenly contested water polo matches between the Brighton SC team and visiting teams from the London area, which provided inspiration to many, myself included.

dudLeY SeIfeRT Born 1939

96 Film stills from Beach Snapshots 1946–1954, The Roger Dunford Film Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.97 Table tennis, Black Rock Swimming Pool.

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The Pier to Pier race was started at the West Pier bathing platform. The bloke who won the first Pier to Pier race was a school mate of mine. He was a Shiverer. I didn’t like him much. In 1937 I swam for the British universities. We had some international games in Paris – athletics, swimming, fencing, boxing, the lot. I was lucky enough to get in the team. I swam the 1500 on the Friday afternoon and then caught the ferry back to Newhaven and got into the Pier to Pier and won the damn thing. I didn’t do so well in France.

dICK ReeVeS Born 1916taken from an interview made on the 13th october 2011

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This information was written by Keith Marlton before he sadly passed away. It was found on his laptop by John Ottaway and it is believed he was producing research on the club’s history. Swimming between the two Brighton piers doubtless has taken place since the completion of the Palace Pier in 1899.

The inaugural Brighton Palace Pier Challenge Trophy Race, organised by Brighton Swimming Club on behalf of the Brighton Corporation, took place at 4.30pm on Thursday 10th September 1936. First prize was £8.00. The handsome trophy, presented by the Directors of the Palace Pier, was then valued at £80.00. It is an open race for men held under ASA Rules. For many years there has been a ladies’ Pier to Pier race on the same occasion as the mens’ race, but this is a separate event. Following cessation of hostilities at the end of the Second World War, the Pier to Pier race was resumed on Saturday 23rd August 1947, when entries from Brighton Swimming Club were A E Spicer, P B Funnell, W F Tuppen, R E Davis, D G Cresswell and A W Holman.

The race has been swum every year since, except in 1956 when it was cancelled. There have been a few postponements due to adverse sea conditions. There is no official record time for the race as each year’s times are affected by wind and tides and comparisons are meaningless.

Originally the race start was by diving or jumping from the West Pier or starting in the water. Since 1975, when the West Pier was closed to the public, the race has started from the beach just east of the pier. Swimmers swim out parallel to the pier and around a marker boat before heading east to a finish boat moored under the Brighton Palace Pier. Although the distance is one of the shortest recognised open water swims, it is scheduled to take place against the prevailing current, which makes for a challenging swim.

taken from an interview made on the 10th February 2012

I was a bit of a scaredy cat. I remember lining up on the landing stage of the West Pier and thinking, ‘Hell’s bells this is a long way up’. Most of them dived in, but I jumped. I didn’t want to dive in. I remember coming up and seeing all these feet in front of me. I fought my way through. I remember my present Club Chairman, in the opposition team, pulling me back. I still won it.

JASpeR STeVenS Born 1952

98 Pier to Pier race, West Pier, July 1970. 99 Pier to Pier race entry form, 1936.

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My grandparents were Italian. My father was Italian. They came to England at the turn of the century with three of their children, had another seven here, and went into the ice cream business. They had ice cream and had a pub over where the old American Express building is now, in Cavendish Street. Then in 1934 they bought five houses when they were built on The Broadway and it was like a little Italian colony here. My father had his ice cream shop east of the pier, and the Arches were under the Palace Pier and further along. Just along to the right, going towards the West Pier at the bottom. It was very basic, cold and dirty. There was a rock shop, and a fancy goods shop, hats and blowers and things, and all the fishing boats wintered at the back under the pier. There was a huge shut-in place and people used to pull boats in after the summer to winter them there. There was a row of shops with people selling teas, but mainly ice cream and ice drinks, which were lemonade with a dollop of ice cream. Of course, it was all loose ice cream. It was all wafers and cornets. They were there for six years after the war, a lot of years before the war, and then Walls came to Brighton, and people went for the wrapped ice creams and business wasn’t so good, so he went into fish and chips.

My earliest memories are of Tuesday and Thursday training sessions. We used to go training all the evenings, speed training, and then afterwards the water polo team used to come and play. They’d have a mock cup match. My father would swim in between times, and I did some racing when I was young but I wasn’t successful. Sometimes he used to take me from school at lunchtime to do a training session, or before I went to school. And that was the routine in the summer. There were some months in the winter when the pool was closed so they didn’t have any swimming, and then Brighton Swimming Club used to arrange to meet. They’d have dance classes and socials for the Club. So the Club kept together all the year round.

In those days it always closed for a month or six weeks in the winter, maybe even two months. I don’t know if it was too expensive to heat the pool or what the reason was. We used to go to St Luke’s Baths as an alternative and do a little bit of training there, but North Road closed.

We used to have to share the changing rooms. There weren’t any! There were just little cubicles along the side of the pool with curtains, and it was like a ranch door. There was a wooden bottom and curtains at the top and everybody had to share. Men one side and women the other side. There was a balcony, which was always full of people, parents and hangers-on looking over the top. There were no showers in those days, just one toilet. And no hot drinks or anything like that. We just got in and did it. You went there to swim. There weren’t as many play sessions as they have now.

I’ve always swum in the sea because we lived near the beach. We used to go to, they used to call them the Arches, on the beach, and people used to go early morning swimming. There was a gala every year off the West Pier and Brighton Swimming Club, obviously they were the main swimmers in that. And we had races. They had to dive off the pier into the sea. Everything was netted off. That was difficult as the tide changed and you were diving deeper and deeper – you were never going to come up!

TOnI BOnneR (née MARCAnTOnIO) Born 1937taken from an interview made on the 7th March 2012

100 Brighton Swimming Club water polo team, 1936. AMS 6946/14 101 Brighton Swimming Club, c. 1936.

My father [Luigi Marcantonio] was built not so much for speed, but for distance and water polo. He was a thickset man; he wasn’t a speed swimmer.

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Interesting thing about the war, the whole beach was mined, and along from the aquarium towards Black Rock there were Bofors guns. One was just up past the steps of the aquarium and then they went on at certain distances right away along to Black Rock, and also the other way along to Palace Pier. GeORGe eVAnS Born 1929taken from an interview made on the 24th november 2011

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I was two when the war broke out. I was seven when it finished. The whole of the seafront on the sea side was barbed wire, so you couldn’t walk on that side of the pavement. You had to walk on the hotel side, because there were mines on the beaches. The military blew up the middle of the piers so that if anybody landed they couldn’t get across. I can remember the West Pier with a gaping great hole in the middle of it. We couldn’t go on the beach until a couple of years after the war. Minesweepers went down there. They had to go over – they couldn’t risk letting anyone go on it.

I can remember there being mines washed in, which had come up from below. They’d been anchored down. Over the years they popped up. That would be in the late 40s, early 50s.

It was quite a normal thing to see barbed wire all along the seafront. I got quite used to it. No ice cream shops. Nothing like that.

pAM SInnOTT (BLYTh) Born 1937taken from an interview made on the 10th February 2012

102 Swimmers take their last dip as Brighton beach is closed, Brighton & Hove Gazette, 6th July 1940.103 Brighton seafront, August 1944.

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The Palace Pier had two big holes blown in it, so if the Germans reached it they couldn’t come in to land. There used to be a big sign on the top of the Palace Pier. I’ve got a film in the shed. It said ‘Palace Pier’ and they used to light it up at night. About 6ft [c. 2m] letters. When they took the barbed wire away, a pal and I took the boat out. We landed on the end of the pier. I climbed right up to that Palace Pier sign and he took a movie film of me.

I was sent as a candidate with a white paper, and they sent me to HMS King Alfred. It was the actual swimming baths on the seafront, but it was a ship. We had the whole swimming pool. We did navigation courses, gunning courses, but I was on top of all that.

I came back and I passed out five days after my 21st birthday; 1943 I passed out. I went to Hanningtons to get my uniform. I took a bit of leave one evening. I was walking back and I passed the Co-Op and I saw in the window a cine camera, for £25, and I thought, ‘I’ll treat myself. That’s my 21st birthday present’.

I was already in the Swimming Club when I went in the Navy. My best friend, he went in the Navy a month before I did. He got killed. He was on the Dunn Eaton when she was sunk in the middle of the Atlantic – John Stebings.

ROGeR dunfORd Born 1922104 Film still of Roger Dunford standing at the top of the Palace Pier, Beach Snapshots 1946–1954, The Roger Dunford Film Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.105 King Alfred being built, 1939.

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taken from an interview made on the 2nd august 2010


Remember when we were pushing Marcia in the push chair? All the people were watching. I asked someone ‘What’s going on?’. They said, ‘There’s a man in trouble in the water’, so I said to my wife, ‘Do you mind if I go in and see if I can help?’. She said, ‘No’. So I ran into the Arch and put on a pair of swimming trunks. David Hallet was in there as well. He was one of the boys in the Surf Life Saving Club. I said, ‘You coming in to give me a hand?’. He said, ‘Yes, let’s go!’. We went in the water, to the end of the groyne, and this bloke was struggling. It was a rough sea, very rough. There were two lifeguards. Corporation lifegaurds. You know, in their white trousers and jackets. They were stood on the groyne shouting, ‘Come out of the water! Come out of the water!’. Anyhow, we didn’t take any notice, we just went and fished this chap out. When we got to the end of the surf where the waves had broken, there was Jim Wild and Tom Handley waiting. They both lifted him up, ‘cause he was unconscious by the time we got to him in the water. They lifted him up and took him to the ambulance, which was already waiting. The police came down and took the lifeguards off the groyne and treated them like heroes. They put them in the police car and took them up to the station. One policeman took us to the police box that was at the end of the Palace Pier opposite the Royal Albion Hotel and took a statement from us. Later that month, the Police Inspector presented us with an award but Jim Wild handed his back as he was furious that the Corporation lifeguards also got medals and they did nothing – they didn’t even go into the water.

ROGeR dunfORd Born 1922

I love a rough sea. Get a nice wave, just turn in, do a bit of body surfing. I’ll tell you one thing that not many people know. When you get a rough sea, every seventh wave is the big one. You remember that and you look and see. The big wave comes in, and the next six are lower, so you choose some time in between those six to get in the water, get out, and then you’re ready for the next one and you surf in with it.

106 Brighton Swimming Club, c. 1950.107 Royal Life Saving Society and Surf Life Saving Association medals awarded to Roger Dunford, various dates.

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taken from an interview made on the 2nd august 2010


108 16mm film stills from Beach Snapshots 1946–1954, The Roger Dunford Film Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.

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taken from an interview made on the 5th December 2011

Goggles came after the war, in the 1950s, and they have improved them all the way along. In the beginning, you’d dive in and they’d move; you’d stop, make them straight, and put them back on, and you’d lose the race. They were a great advantage, the goggles, but especially for training if you were a long distance swimmer.

After the war there was little entertainment; football, swimming. We used to hold galas, sell tickets at 1/6d, 2/6d each. Sell them all out, get crowds to watch it. But it’s only parents and supporters now. . .

GeORGe eLeY Born 1918

109 Official opening of the Brighton Swimming Club Arch, 4th January 1948.

Club members at the reopening of the Arch by Alderman P F Friend-James, OBE, Mayor of Brighton – the one in clothes. On his right, in bathing cap, is Tommy White, who was instrumental in finding the club premises in 1931.


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My dad took me down for the opening. The mayor came and opened it up. It was all quite official.


I spent my life on the beach, because just after the war there were always holidays at home. No-one went abroad. You couldn’t afford it. So August bank holiday was our holiday. My wife used to come down on the bus, bring the meals, and I used to come down earlier. And Jim and Conny. There was quite a big group of us. It became part of our lives. Twelve o’clock Saturday was the all-year-round swim, and 12 o’clock Sundays. Jim used to take the water temperature. For the Christmas Day swim the water was cold but it wasn’t too bad, but come Easter it would have dropped down to 38 [3.3˚C] and all the visitors would be going in at Easter and thinking it was silly us going in on Christmas Day. The water was colder at Easter. That used to amuse us.

BOB ChARLTOn Born 1927

110 Official opening of the Brighton Swimming Club Arch, Sussex Daily News, 5th January 1948. AMS 6946/5/2 111 Film stills from Beach Snapshots 1946–1954, The Roger Dunford Film Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.

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taken from an interview made on the 23rd august 2010


‘Crossing the line’ is done when [ocean] liners cross the equator. Everybody used to dress up and do silly things. Well, Roger had been in the Navy, so he thought we could do that on a bank holiday Monday.

We used to dress up in silly costumes, maybe as tramps. The art college used to have a rag day and people went about in atrocious-looking outfits. My husband managed to wangle his way in. I was working at my hairdressing job. Passing the rollers, standing in the window, I saw my husband coming down the street, a towel around his head as a turban, and playing a recorder, as if he was mesmerizing a snake out of a basket. I thought,

‘Oh no. I won’t let anybody know that he’s my boyfriend’. They were happy times.


Since the 18th century, sailors have celebrated the crossing of the equator with an elaborate ceremony in which the uninitiated appear before King Neptune’s court, usually in drag. After serving in the Royal Navy towards the tail end of the Second World War, Brighton Swimming Club member Roger Dunford brought his own version of this ritual back to Brighton beach. Dressed in fancy dress and under the watchful eye of King Neptune – played by the Club’s Chairman – plus several hundred onlookers, members of the Club would ‘shave’ and dunk anyone unfortunate enough to be within reach. The ceremony ended when King Neptune himself was dunked in.

dARRen TAffIndeR Floating MeMories volunteer 112 Neptune Rag, August bank holiday, 1954.

113 Film still of Father Neptune, Beach Snapshots 1946–1954, The Roger Dunford Film Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.

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taken from an interview made on the 5th January 2012

It was the lifestyle. We were not very well off, the sea was there for us. We used to meet at the Arch and, as a crowd of people, we just enjoyed the sea as it was there for us. In those days you had none of the things that people have now. Initially we didn’t have flippers, so when you surfed you just had to use yourself to get in on a wave.

GeORGe eVAnS Born 1929

We lived our lives on the beach at the weekends. We loved it. We had barbecues down there at night, and dancing in the Swimming Club Arch. It was part of my life . . . I had many, many friends and lots of good memories.

It was the sort of life that didn’t cost anything. We used to rush down on a Sunday morning, maybe about 7.00, maybe with a bag of cornflakes, and we’d stay there till the sun went down.

pAM SInnOTT (BLYTh) Born 1937 taken from an interview made on the 10th February 2012

114 Club members, c. 1959. 115 Club members, c. 1959.116 Jim Wild and Roger Dunford, Beach barbecue, c. 1959.117 Entertainment in the Arch, c. 1959.118 Entertainment in the Arch, c. 1959.119 Entertainment in the Arch, c. 1959.

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120 Brief history of Brighton Surf Life Saving Club, 1959. AMS 6946/13/2 121 Newspaper cutting, unknown source.122 Brighton Ladies’ Surf Life Saving Club, beach drill, c. 1950s. AMS 6946/14/29 123 Brighton Surf Life Saving Club, c. 1950s. AMS 6946/14/30

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The lifesaving reel is an Australian invention. It is a wooden reel with a rope and harness attached to it. For a rescue, you have a guard watching. You have one person dealing out the rope, five people paying out the rope. One person puts on a body band. Once the rescuer got out to the patient they gave a signal, and they would be pulled in. The rescuer had their arm round the patient. The reel made it much easier to get the person in. I think they’re still used in Brighton and Cornwall. Now they have surfboats, which are much quicker. With an engine on the back, you’re much quicker. Reel and line is too manual now.

Roger Dunford said, ‘How about starting a ladies’ lifeguard service?’. We all took our bronze medallions. We managed to get hold of a reel and line that the Queen had brought back from Bondi Beach.

It was a novelty having a ladies’ team. I got a letter asking would I mind going on television. There was a programme called ‘In Town Tonight’. I was asked to go up to London, and my mother accompanied me to the ‘bad city’. For the programme I had so much make-up on it looked ridiculous. I was 16 and I looked about 74. I met the High Commissioner of Australia. He said, ‘Would you come up to Australia House for the presentation of the reel and line?’. That was how we got involved with the Australian Surf Lifesaving teams.

The ladies’ lifeguards didn’t last. It only went on for a couple of years. We were going out with our different boyfriends and lost interest. For the men’s team too, it got harder to get people to join.


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In 1950 a group of us in the Brighton Swimming Club decided to go diving. People had got hold of masks. We didn’t have fins yet. We called it the Brighton Bottom Scratchers. It was the first underwater club in the UK, even before the British Sub Aqua Club was formed.

When I first used the mask it was totally mind blowing. Brighton Pier had a lot of fish swimming around it. During the war they blew up a section of it and it was on the bottom, so after the war they had to rebuild it again. . . When they’d rebuilt it and we started diving we could swim around the wreckage, in the shallow water. There were loads and loads, I mean hundreds, of fish. Some were quite large. It was like being in an aquarium. When we started the diving club in Brighton nobody had heard of wet suits. We were trying to find old navy gear – we finished up making our own suits.

I was diving east of the Palace Pier and could see a conga eel sticking out of the pipe . . . so I went down and shot it. I thought [the pipe would] be a good piece of scrap. Big pipe, large diameter, about 14in [35.6cm] across. It got fatter as it went along. I thought, that’s a blimmin’ cannon. There was a large bronze cannon on the bottom, where Brighton Marina is now. Nobody knew about this. Two or three other smaller ones were there too. So I told the boys when I got back to the Clubhouse. I said, ‘I don’t know how we can lift it’. So we decided to go back tomorrow.

Next day it was gone. This other guy got hold of a local fisherman with a boat and went down and lifted it. That cannon finished up in the Tower of London. Unfortunately, instead of using a nylon strap they used a wire. It cut into the bronze and cut into the markings as the bronze was soft. It was about 7½ft [2.3m] long. Enormous. The others had gone as well. I can only assume the guy who took them made a lot of money.

That wreck is still there. They built Brighton Marina on top of it. We had the dive shop in Shoreham when they were building it. We were supplying their air. One day a diver came in and told us he’d found big timbers with copper fastenings. I told him that’s where the cannons were. They cleared the rubbish out of the way for the fastenings. He said all the copper and so on went up to the tip. We still don’t know what the wreck was.

MIChAeL dAVIeS Born 1936taken from an interview made on the 18th February 2012

I was fascinated being under water. It was something different. It was totally new. Very few people in England had been diving, let alone spearfishing. It was an adventure.

124 Headed Club notepaper, 1951.125 Spearfishing. 126 Bob Charlton with a lobster caught under the Palace Pier, 1952.

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We used to make our own suits. We used to put our clothes on underneath them. You put the top half on, then you put the bottom half, and then you’d get a cummerbund. The bottom overlapped the top, so you’d roll it up like a sausage and put the cummerbund on, and that was supposed to keep the water out. But it never did so we used to get old inner tubes and vulcanise them at the garages to make them a bit tighter. They still weren’t that successful but there again, once the water got in you had a wet suit.

The first dive I did under the pier with my bottle – the very first one – I picked up 10 shillings where they’d dropped out between the boards. I believe it’s quite lucrative there. All the shellfish bars there . . . after making the whelks up, all the shells are thrown in the sea, so consequently you’ve got a whole carpet of shells occupied by hermit crabs. When you swam across them, the whole seabed used to go oomp, because they [the crabs] all saw the shadow and they all went back in their shells. Where they’d all been on their little feet, it looked as if the whole seabed had dropped.

BOB ChARLTOn Born 1927taken from an interview made on the 23rd august 2010

127 Mike Davies, Tony Rogers and Bob Charlton with an evening’s ‘bass catch’ from under the pier, 1952. (One of the bass weighed 14½lb (2.3kg) and was a national record that was only beaten in 2004.) 128 Bob Sutton and Mike Davies, Brighton Swimming Club Arch, 1952.

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Sometimes going down to the sea in the winter, I can be in two minds, but never have I gone into the sea and regretted it, apart from once or twice when I got a fright. In the winter particularly, the water is obviously quite cold, but you come out and it does have a really good mental and beneficial effect. Certainly I felt uplifted, in a better frame of mind.

About 1978, I was going through quite a rough period, I had started to do things to get back on my feet again. I had always had an interest in swimming but that had all gone by the wayside, so I joined ‘improver’ swimming classes. The instructor there was a chap called Norman Swaysland. One evening, in January, he said to me, ‘It was quite cold in the sea today’, and of course I immediately said, ‘You must be mad’. Then it all came out that he was a member of the Brighton Swimming Club. So through Norman, I joined the Club. It was such a big thing in my life, looking back, and led not just to get me back into swimming and to my love of swimming in the sea, but also it led on to other things. I made great friends in the Swimming Club, lifelong friends as it turned out. It really was a turning point in my life.

I joined the Club in the July of that year and I had absolutely no intention of swimming in the winter. I was just thinking of the summer, but in fact, that very first year, members started talking about the Christmas swim and I thought, no way would I do that, but I did. I did actually swim every day, seven days a week.

TOnY BRAnnICK Born 1937taken from an interview made on the 2nd november 2012

129 Certificate awarded to Tony Brannick for swimming in the sea below 40˚F (4.46˚C).130 Len Chapman, Norman Sadler, Tony Brannick, Jim Wild, 1983.

131 Neil Tasker, c. 1955.132 Brill’s Baths, 1920.

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In 1947, just after the war, I moved down to Brighton. My stepfather was then the Regional Controller for the whole of South England, for the ABC Cinema Group, so we were given a flat on top of the Savoy Cinema, now a casino, on the seafront very close to Brighton Pier. It was very easy for a little boy to cross the road from there and onto the beach. That beach happened to be the Brighton Swimming Club beach and it was ideal for having a summer holiday, swimming several times a day with faster Club swimmers.

I actually taught myself to swim in the sea. Not there, but in Pevensey. We used to go there for two weeks every year. My stepfather used to rent one of the bungalows, which were right on the beach. Pevensey had a lot of sand and shingle. Mostly sand at low tide, and I just used to be out in the water all the time. One day my feet left the bottom and I could swim. My mother didn’t believe me – and she called it ‘cat paddle’, not

‘dog paddle’. They used to take the mickey out of me. I think I did something like 20 strokes with my feet off the bottom. Soon after that I joined the Brighton Swimming Club to follow my two brothers, by which time Julian, my eldest brother, was obviously doing well in his own right. He was winning Sussex County titles, and was obviously my role model.

In 1929 Brill’s Baths was demolished to make way for the Savoy Cinema. The original baths, opened by Mr Lamprell in 1823, featured a large domed roof affectionately nicknamed ‘The Bunion’. Mr Lamprell’s nephew, Charles Brill, inherited the baths in 1845 and they were known thereafter as Brill’s Baths. The earliest Brighton Swimming Club matches took place in the sea opposite Brill’s. Charles Brill supported the Club, donating a life buoy in 1861.

I usually knew who I had to beat and I used them as a hare. I tried to swim by their waist and stay there, then try to put it on towards the end and win. The question was when to turn it on. Some people were extremely fast over the last length. I wasn’t. In middle-distance races I used to have to break away about three lengths from the end, but then most of my competitors who could do the last length fast could not do that; they’d die if they tried. You know, there was a lot of tactics even in those days, in spite of our lack of training regimes. Oh yes, we used to suss our competitors out.

I did a lot of my swimming in the sea. Not so much my training, just distance swimming. I used to swim up to Black Rock, which is now the Marina. They had a 55yd [c. 50m] pool there and I used to do a training session in the swimming pool then swim back. That was in the summer. The winter was really not very useful. Both North Road and King Alfred closed down, except King Alfred had a small pool – 25yd [c. 23m]. It was pretty tiny. I think we had an hour every Monday and that was it. That was Brighton Swimming Club’s training during the winter.

I swam GB from 1957 to 1959. Too young for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and I was doing my finals at college during the Rome Olympics, so I didn’t even make them either. I wasn’t even training.

I remember a 200m freestyle swim in the Southern Counties at King Alfred. I felt I should have won the 400m, which was the day before, but I got sussed out of that one, by two older GB swimmers. I think I formulated all night long. The next day, the 200m, I went out from the front and left them all trailing. That was a race I remember.

neIL TASKeR Born 1938taken from an interview made on the 7th March 2012

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There were all sorts of people in the club. Tom Garrett, he was the Editor of the Brighton & Hove Herald . . . and solicitors, and all sorts of funny things happened. A solicitor, his name was Thomas, they called him Slasher Thompson for some reason. One winter’s day – it was December or January – the sea was coming from the east, and it’s always bad in the winter, an easterly sea, because it drives you into the easterly groyne. Anyway, off we go. We were going into the water and the sky looked like it was just about to snow and it actually did snow when we were in the water. But this Slasher Thompson, he’d gone out to the end of the groyne and he’d found that the current had taken him, and he had a hell of a time to get back, so he went round the end of the groyne and came back up on the fish-market beach. Well, by this time the snow was coming down quite thickly and what he had to do to get back to the club, he had to walk up the beach, walk up the slope onto the promenade and then walk down the steps on the other side. When he got onto the promenade he’s walking along in his swimming trunks . . . and a young couple comes along for a stroll, and when they saw this figure coming out of the snow in swimming trunks and in a very deep voice say ‘good morning’, they wondered what the hell was going on!

My swimming experience didn’t really get anywhere until I joined the Brighton Swimming Club, which was not until 1961. I was 31 and it was August I remember. In the summer it’s easy. The sun’s out and the water is quite a good temperature, and I was surprised when we got to September/October that they were still carrying on swimming. The water was getting a little bit colder and I said, ‘When do we actually pack up for the winter?’. They said, ‘We don’t pack up, we work through’. I thought of myself as a bit tough so I carried on as well. Well, I got to December and I caught a cold, but the following year I came back, did a lot of swimming, and that following winter I got right through it. They used to have an Under Forty Club, which meant that if you went in the sea under 40 degrees [4.46˚C] you would get a nice certificate. This was always an attraction because some of the swimmers would come down and say ‘What’s the temperature today?’, and you’d say, ‘39’ [3.8˚C], and they’d get changed, dive into the sea and get the certificate. But if it was 41 [5˚C] they wouldn’t bother. I’ve got a few of those certificates. The coldest I’ve been in the sea was 34 [1.1˚C]. That’s very, very cold. . . One lunchtime the sea temperature was about 30-something [−1.1˚C] and the air temperature was 20 [−6.6˚C]. This was coming from Russia apparently. If it had been fresh water, it would have frozen on us, but as it was salt, it didn’t. 34 [1.1˚C] was the coldest I went in but I think Jim Wild went in at 29 [−1.6˚C]. If I go into the water I’ve got to swim, so it had to be to the end of the groyne and back, which was 150yd or so [c. 137m], but I did get an actual swim. Cold- water swimming is very, very tiring. Your muscles are trying to combat the coldness and your energy’s going trying to combat that coldness. It’s like walking in snow. . . Once your strength goes it’s not so good, so really, it’s knowing how far you can go. The great advantage is that you balance on top of the water. Salt water, cold – very, very buoyant. Fresh water, warm – you sink down into it.

nORMAn SWAYSLAnd Born 1929taken from an interview made on the 21st november 2012

133 Under Forty Club certificate, given to Club members who enter the sea under 40˚F (4.46˚C), 1970. 134 Norman Swaysland, 14th November 1978. 135 Newspaper cuttings collected by Keith Marlton.

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When I first started to do the Pier to Pier, we only had about 30 to 40 competitors. It was open to anybody who belonged to a swimming club. You still do have to belong to a swimming club, because you have to be registered with the Amateur Swimming Association. So we started off with about 30, which is quite easy to manage really. They used to start from the West Pier, because in those days it was a working pier. Some of them used to dive off one of the fishing platforms there and some started in the water. In those days, I used to jump into a speedboat that took me from one pier to the other so I was at the other end when they arrived. Eventually the pier closed so we had to start it from the beach, but each year the numbers were gradually getting more and more. And it was men only in those days. Well, as the years went by, numbers were creeping up to about 70-odd, until we were over 100, and the women wanted to swim as well, so we started a race for the women. Although they

swam together, they were two completely separate races because you couldn’t swim one against the other under the laws of the sport. The women start off about two minutes after the men. Most of them catch the men up and finish before some of the men. They line up along the edge of the beach, and standing behind them, it is quite something to watch … their feet are going, their arms are flaying. But one year they all got out and went round the boat to head towards the Palace Pier and all of a sudden a mist came down and we could not see anybody out there. This time I was going out in a boat. At this stage, I used to cadge a lift. I thought, I hope they all finish. You just didn’t know what was going on out there, but they did all finish, they all came in, so I was rather relieved about that.

MARGAReT Tuppen Born 1934taken from an interview made on the 11th March 2012

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Water polo when I first saw it back in the 1950s. . . I saw it at the Black Rock Swimming Pool and teams would come down from London. I have a picture somewhere at home of a Canadian team that did a tour of Europe, towards the end of the 1940s. All of them were shaped like triangles – broad shoulders, no bottom and massive legs – and they were all about 19 or 20 years old. They played with a leather ball in those days, which got heavier and heavier as the season progressed. I don’t think we ever ever had a spare ball, and we guarded this polo ball as though it was a Club relic almost. But it was heavy, and if you ever caught the ball in your face, that was really really painful.

In those days we had seven players and we started like in football – all lined up after every goal in our various positions. It was not a particularly mobile game. You kept your positions. As the game progressed there were all sorts of iterations in terms of the rules and even the numbers of players. When you come through to today, it’s thirteen players, not seven. Only seven of them are in the water at any one time, and we have rolling substitution. Normally that’s done when there’s a goal scored or at the end of a quarter. taken from an interview made on 6th March 2012

Also, in the early days it was two halves, not four quarters as it is now. And it was two halves of about 20 minutes each, so it did last for a long long time. Deep water was obviously the way to play, but certain pools have shallow ends and that can be quite good when you get older like me as you can get a rest.

The main aim for the game was to have a strong goalie, two strong defenders and at least one very good attacker with a very good shot, and it was rare that anyone other than the attacker scored, whereas nowadays we have the rule that if the team has the ball you’re all attacking, if the team doesn’t have the ball you’re all defending. And everyone can shoot. Nobody particularly has a fixed position in the game; it’s where you find yourself in the game. And they have new expressions now like ‘breaking’, which means that when a forward attack breaks down, the defenders break away, and its called ‘breaking’. It’s a completely new word that wasn’t in the vocabulary when we were younger.

TIM peARCe Born 1939

136 Mr J V Cornelios, Editor of the Observer, congratulates Tim Pearce, Captain of the Brighton Swimming Club water polo team.

137 Sussex over 40s water polo team team with Brighton players John Ottaway, Keith Marlton, Michael Elliot and Tim Pearce. 138 Sussex over 40s water polo team team with Brighton players Neil Tasker, Keith Marlton, Phil Divall and Tim Pearce.

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I don’t have any fear in the sea and I would say to people that’s not a good thing, because you really must respect it. It can be extremely dangerous. But it just came naturally. I feel at home in the sea. Where, if it’s a little bit rough, I think most people will struggle and panic, I don’t have that difficulty. I find it very easy to go along with the waves and the currents, and I can feel them. You have a feel for the water.

I was at Varndean and the Headmaster stood up in assembly one day and he said, ‘I’m sure you’ll all be delighted to hear that Neil Tasker has been selected to swim for Great Britain’. And that was the lightning thunderbolt that changed my life. I went up to Neil and said ‘I want to swim like you’. He said, ‘Join the Brighton Swimming Club and I’ll give you all the help I can’, and that was the start of my memories of Brighton Swimming Club.

MIChAeL ReAd Born 1941taken from an interview made on the 23rd august 2012139 Evening Argus, 11th July 1960.

140 Michael Read, 1970.141 Michael Read, 1961.

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I bought a house in Brighton in 1983, and I noticed my neighbour over the garden wall had swimming costumes out rather early in the year, the beginning of May. I thought that was strange so I asked, ‘have you been swimming?’, and he said, ‘yes’. I said, ‘in the sea?’, and he said, ‘yes’. So I tried it but I found it much too cold, swimming at that time of year. I used to swim off the beach in the early ’80s and then I joined the Swimming Club. My neighbour joined the Swimming Club, probably in ’87, and said I might like to, and then I could swim through the winter. So I joined in the summer of 1988. Though we went swimming together on the day after the hurricane in October 1987. There’d been a hell of a blow the previous night but it was low tide and you could swim in a very disturbed sea. It was about chest high. It was quite fun.

We swam usually about half past eleven, round about lunchtime, so it was mainly for retired people. It wasn’t for working people. But the key thing was you had to be able to come in at least two or three days a week. Well, I was working so I was only swimming at weekends at the time, so it was a bit hard. You lost some acclimatisation.

Once, I found myself in the rip tide, either side of the pier. At low tide, if it’s windy, the current can take you out. They call it the ‘escalator’ now. I swam halfway round the pier and back again and suddenly found myself going backwards and got a bit panicky, which was silly. So the next time I went, went in with Len, it was still rough weather. We swam into this rip tide and I let myself be carried out. Len said ‘just swim across a bit further and you’ll find yourself in hardly enough water to swim in’. You just swim across the rip tide.

henRY LAW Born 1941taken from an interview made on the 14th september 2012

142 Henry Law, 16th June 2009 © Kevin Meredith. 143 Henry Law, 16th June 2009 © Kevin Meredith.

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When I am in the water I feel at home. I am on morphine to kill the pain in my back. In the water, I’m free of gravity and the pain goes, particularly when the water’s cold. The longer I can stay in, the more mobility I gain, so I have to be reliant on my crutch to get down into the sea, but I don’t need it when I get out. For a bit anyway. That’s what keeps me in the sea.

The benefit of swimming with others is that I can watch what they’re doing and build up even more knowledge of how the sea’s behaving. So, I’ve got the trick of inserting myself, when a westerly gale is blowing at low tide, beside the pier and using the force of the wind blowing the water through the pier legs, creating slight vortices in the water, to propel me forward, stanchion to stanchion, and to get me to the pier head where I’m sheltered and can swim without having to duck under the rollers. That’s been picked up from watching the surfers. You really do learn from the sea. I think it was seeing fish jumping that led me to think, ‘how can I adjust a hand line so I can catch fish whilst I swim’, and this is where the band cane with its forked ends and the fishing line wrapped round it comes in. It’s quite difficult at times, unhooking the fish and throwing them into the net round my neck. It’s also exciting, and that keeps me in the water longer.

dAVId SAWYeRS Born 1941

144 Sea bathing logbook, recording weather conditions and names of members present, 1990–1992. AMS 6946/15/2 145 David Sawyers netting a mackerel after ‘swishing’ (fishing whilst swimming) at the end of the Palace Pier © Kevin Meredith, July 17 2008. taken from an interview made on the 28th July 2012

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I moved to Brighton in about 1985. I’d been coming down to Brighton to swim in the sea for some time before that. I used to live in a village on the other side of Gatwick and I used to come down quite frequently and swim in the sea, but not with the Brighton sea swimmers. I joined the Club in, I think, 1991. It was the first time that women joined the club.

It was Christmas Day and I said to Jasper, one of the swimmers I knew, ‘Where are you going to?’. He said, ‘We’re swimming out to the silver ball’. I just had a swimming costume on. I hadn’t got a hat on, I hadn’t got gloves on, I hadn’t got boots. As we were going in I looked across and said ‘This isn’t fair, you’ve all got stuff on.’ Well, my lovely dog met me as I came out. He met me on the shore. That was my introduction to the Club.

The first year that I joined, on the 1st of December, David Sawyers took me round the pier, then he said, ‘Well done Flick. You’re the first woman to swim round the pier’. I said, ‘I’m not back yet’. We got back and he said, ‘There you are, you’re back’. You get a bit brain dead. Well, I do. As we walked up the beach I said, ‘Well, it’ll probably be broken tomorrow’. He said, ‘It can’t be broken Flick. You’re the first one to do it!’.

And there were multiple pier swims. That’s when you swim from one side to the other. You have to touch the bottom and then go around again; the record was six. I did six and then I did seven and then I broke my own record and did eight. I don’t think people do that now. It took me 3 hours 20 minutes. At the end I became a bit brain dead. Not from cold.

FELICITY HAGUE BORN 1938

I always count my strokes, the total rotation. If it’s crawl, usually I average about 700. It depends on the tide. I started counting and then about three people joined me for the last round to keep me focused, which was wonderful. I wasn’t going to get hypothermia, but I hadn’t an idea how many strokes I’d done, but it was 3 hours 20 minutes. Obviously it was a lovely day.

146 Marina to Palace Pier swimmers, 2002. 147 My Sea, Felicity Hague, 24th January 2012.

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Jim Wild was a stalwart, a great big man. He was a pawnbroker in Lewes Road. He was immensely tough. Even when quite old he did remarkable swims. One day, when about 75, he swam around the Palace Pier in January with a water temperature of 7 degrees [c. 44˚F]. How he did that I don’t know. On his 80th birthday he swam round the pier. On his 90th birthday he swam to the café in the middle of the pier. He lived to be 92. He’d also been a great long distance walker. When he died, on the coffin were a pair of walking boots and a pair of flippers, which he always wore. He was very popular, rather quiet, a great animal lover. He would stand with an arm outstretched and seagulls would come and perch on his arm to get food.

I started in 1970 with the Swimming Club. I used to swim during my lunch hour. I worked for the old Brighton and Hove Herald, which had offices in the Pavilion buildings. I used to go down and have a swim. On the next beach, now called the Albion Beach, I saw these tremendous swimmers and I thought, ‘I can’t possibly go on the same beach as them, they are so good’. They seemed to be in a club. But a local, Phil Bird, who was on the Evening Argus said, ‘Why don’t you join the Club? They’ll teach you how to swim’. So I did.

We had long lunch hours at the Brighton and Hove Herald in those days. An hour and a half. That was quite common at the time in Brighton. So there was plenty of time to walk down and have a swim and a few sandwiches and come back again. It was a huge pleasure in my life to do that. I found a few in the Swimming Club who were really friendly. They taught me how to swim and a number became very good friends. Most of the Club people went swimming in their lunch hour. We went in for 15 to 20 minutes. We swam mainly to the silver ball, on the café on the Palace Pier. We went to level with that then came back. That was quite a decent swim at high tide. That would take me about 17 minutes.

AdAM TRIMInGhAM Born 1942taken from an interview made on the 22nd February 2012

148 Jim Wild, Norman Sadler, not known, Norman Swaysland, Adam Trimingham and Len Chapman, winter 1983. 149 Jim Wild.

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Brighton Swimming Club was the Brighton men’s, so I was actually a member of the Brighton Ladies’, and as far as I can make out it was either the day I was born or the day after. My mum [Maudie Ottaway] joined the Club when she was seven, with her sisters and brothers. They thought because she lived by the sea she should be able to swim, so my grandad joined them all up. I think she started coaching at 14. She became Secretary at 17 and she did that for about 71 years, but I’m not absolutely sure on that. She coached a couple of Olympic swimmers. The whole family connection with the Club basically goes back to 1920.

LYnn MACKenZIe Born 1944

150 Brighton Ladies’ Water Polo Club, 1937. AMS 6946/14/32151 Brighton Ladies’ Swimming Club poster advertising entertainment at the West Pier, Friday 14th August 1896. AMS 6946

taken from an interview made on the 3rd March 2012

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I’ve been in the Swimming Club all my life. The rumour is I was joined on the very day I was born, by my mother, who was a swimming coach in Brighton. She just took us down the pool, wrapped a ring round us and threw us in the deep end whilst she was training the girls. So all I had was fast girl swimmers, because it used to be Brighton Ladies’ Swimming Club then, and she trained them.

My mum was the Secretary of Brighton Ladies’ Swimming Club and also the coach for some 50-odd years. She trained an Olympian swimmer, a lady called Jean Caplin. Jean swam in the 1948 Olympics in London and mum was there to watch it. Swimming was her life. She never got paid a penny as in those days it was an amateur swimming association.

I started off as a competitive swimmer, and reached the dizzy heights of swimming for Sussex as a junior. I then got into water polo, which has been my main sport throughout. I played for both Sussex Juniors and Seniors and I was a reserve for the England side.

My very first sea race, it was quite a rough day, my dad took me down there. I must have been about 10 or 11 I suppose, and I think it was 800m. I swam the 800m and was back on the shore. I would have been first, but I couldn’t get out because of the height of the waves and all things like that. And good old Jim Wild, as he swam past me to get out, said, ‘I’ll come and get you in a minute’, and that is what happened. They all finished past me, my dad’s going mad on the beach wondering about his little boy, and then they decided to come and show me how to get out.

The day of the Mods and Rockers first going off in Brighton, we were on the beach, me and Michelle Benney. We were down the beach and all of a sudden there were people being thrown over the top of the railings and landing on our beach, so we all got in the Arch and were behind the door peeping out.

We’ve won the National League, the Sussex League. I’ve had all good things from the Swimming Club. I don’t think I’ve had any bad things. You know, you moan about them at the time but I think without that I don’t know where I’d be, or where I would have gone. So I’ve got me mum something to bless her for.

Be very cautious, know your limitations. The easiest thing is getting in the sea; the hardest thing is getting out. We have a saying down there, you’ve been ‘ejected’ from the sea, which is when you try to get out and you get hit by a wave and get thrown out anyway. It’s quite a thing to be ejected from the sea in Brighton. It still happens. All our new members, I watch them go down there, they walk in and they come out partcha [ejected].

JOhn OTTAWAY Born 1947taken from an interview made on the 7th March 2012

152 John Ottaway and Keith Marlton.153 Newspaper cutting, 1975.

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The sea is virtually every colour. I’ve seen it in shades of blue, grey, black, brown, yellow, green. You tend not to get reds but you get some amazing variations, and you get red glows in the sea. The sea picks up colour from the sky and all sorts of things, so it can look as though it’s very different colours. That’s part of its attraction. It’s so different every day, the colour of it, the sensation of it, the feel of it, the bounciness of it, the calmness of it, the rage of it. It’s different all the time, and colour is a part of that. Going down on a really grey, murky day when you can’t see because of the foggy stuff, it’s very different from going down on a really crisp, bright winter morning with a red sunrise.

I like October and February because you’ve got sunrise. In those months of the year, when I go down it’s the time of sunrise. Winter’s always quiet as well. You very rarely see other people down there; 7.15am you don’t get that many people down there even in the summer, but you do get people generally wandering around, going home from the clubs and stuff like that, or sitting around on the beach. Winter’s nice. It’s our beach in the winter, and it feels like it’s sort of our protected area for people who appreciate it. And in the summer it’s full of tourists dumping their litter all over it, not enjoying it for what it is.

BOB phIppS Born 1950taken from an interview made on the 22nd February 2012

154 The Brighton Swimming Club beach © Charlotte Savins, 2012.155 Bob Phipps © Kevin Meredith, 30th November 2010.

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[It was] Brighton beach every weekend and even during the week sometimes. If I got a phone call when I got home – a friend of mine, Phil Duvall, if he was driving along the seafront, or I was driving along the seafront, and we saw some decent surf, we’d get home quick and ring them all up and let them know and say, ‘Get down the beach. There’s some good surf coming in!’. I remember one day, and I couldn’t believe it, between the two piers there was a line of waves and they were so uniform. They were about 3 to 4ft high [c. 1m], but they were coming in parallel to the shore. It was unbelievable. You would never ever see a picture like that again. It was incredible. Before I could get my board down to the beach, the tide had turned and it all went away! There we go. But it was lovely to see. There was a guy down there called Jim Wild – the ‘Father of the Sea’ we called him. Sadly, he died a few years back but I knew Jim. He was an old man when I was a young boy. I’m now an old man but he’s only just died, so it tells you how long he was around. I always wanted to be guided by him with regards to, ‘Don’t go into the sea today it’s a bit too rough’. Because if I saw a good sea I’d love to get in there if it was rough, on the surfboard, but there were times when you wouldn’t go in because he said, ‘No, it’s a bit dodgy today. Don’t go in. Stay on the shore’. I would be guided by other people, but you have to use your own common sense as well, because the sea – you only get one chance with the sea. You don’t get many second chances.

MIChAeL ‘SnOWY’ WALdeR Born 1950

My earliest recollection of joining Brighton Swimming Club? I was seven years old. My brother and sister came at the same time, but I was the eldest of the three. It was about 1956/57. My memory of that time is fear! Of going into the pool. My mum and dad wanted me to do something and they felt that swimming might be a good way to be involved in a club atmosphere. I think they could see that other young people were growing up. It was the days when it was all Teddy Boys and just before the Mods and Rockers, and they wanted their children to be in a decent environment, so they decided to put us into a swimming club. I was a bit apprehensive about it I guess. But they put me in and to be honest, I never looked back. It was great. It was daunting, but once we went down there a couple of times . . . My mum and dad kept persevering with it and I’ve never, ever looked back. The only problem now is that I can’t swim no more because of my health, but I can look back on some very many great memories. I think it’s quite plain that we took to it well because my brother and my sister, we’ve been in the Swimming Club all our lives and we’re still involved in the Swimming Club to some degree. Not so much myself personally, but we’re all still there. Yes, it was a good thing my parents did and I’m so grateful to them.

taken from an interview made on the 24th november 2012156 Surfing at Brighton, c. 1970.

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I started swimming when I was nine years old. My earliest memory is my mother teaching me to swim at Black Rock Swimming Pool and putting a rubber ring around me and saying ‘off you go’. I was nine years old when I actually joined Brighton Ladies’. In those days they were separate clubs, because Brighton Swimming Club was men only. I can physically remember going down the pool and Maudie Ottaway, John Ottaway’s mother, said, ‘yes, you can join our swimming club’.

The Black Rock Swimming Pool, I think, was 50m long, and had a diving board at one end. I can remember on one occasion it took me all day to jump off the thing. I got a round of applause as there was a big balcony that went round the top and people used to sit up there. There were little tables and deckchairs and things, so it was action-packed that pool in the summer. For years they used to say they should have actually converted it into a major indoor swimming pool, but they never did. Obviously the Marina was built, etc. Every summer holiday, I was definitely about 10, maybe 11, my mum used to pack us up some sandwiches in a tin and we used to come down on the bus from Moulsecoomb, to get on the Volk’s Railway. This is me and my younger brother. We were so young, and we used to go into Black Rock Pool in the summer holidays and we used to swim in the swimming pool. No adults!!!

When I went back to Masters swimming, it was a place you could go to and swim up and down and no-one can get you: no phone, no this, no the other. You can sort of go within yourself, sort out a few things while you’re training. It’s one of those sort of things . It just gives you a lot of pleasure really.

Down the old North Road pool, I can remember Tommy White. He was the old Treasurer. He ruled it like a rod of steel. You used to shake. He used to stand at the door collecting the money in his suit, because they were all prim and proper in those days, and he would say, ‘you can’t come in’, this that and the other.

denISe hALLS Born 1951taken from an interview made on the 22nd February 2012

157 Denise Halls, Janet Gilby, Joan Wheeler, Jackie Jackson, Jenny Nodes, North Road Baths, 1964.158 Diving at Black Rock Swimming Pool, c. 1950. 159 Sea state calendar, 28th Janaury 1954. AMS 6946/14/43

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A friend said he’d join me, after not swimming for years. We went in, it was a bit rough, it was drizzling, he was being a bit girly and I was teasing him. When we came out after we’d swum, he’d loved every minute. I said to him, ‘Nick this is your birthright. You can swim in the sea whenever you want’. His eyes sparkled and lit up. We decided to try and keep going. He worked shifts as an ambulance driver and he would go in swimming when I was working and come into my office – late September/early October – and say, ‘I’ve just been in the sea’. I’d think ‘Damn, I’ll have to go in’. In November you think, ‘This is winter, I’ve cracked it’. No-one told us that it’s still two to three months until the sea is at its coldest. In November you’re actually quite close to August – the warmest time. We didn’t realize it was going to get a lot colder. By doing this competitive jokey thing, we got through. That was 20 years ago. I’ve been doing it ever since. So has he.

Swimming in a seaside town is a glue that binds you together. The sea is part of your life. I’ll often drive along the waterfront – it’s blindingly obvious that this huge town stops dead at this line. We’re bound by the Downs on the other side. Other towns just splurge out. You can’t do this in Brighton. The sea is an important part of the geography.

JASpeR STeVenS Born 1952taken from an interview made on the 10th February 2012

From when I joined the Club I remember hearing about sea races, which had been going on for 80 or 90 years. I never thought of doing them. I went down to the Arch, in the late 1970s/early ‘80s, and I’ve been doing them ever since. The mile race is swum for the Hart Shield. It’s actually worth quite a lot of money. It’s the oldest Brighton Swimming Club trophy. It dates back to 1893.

160 The Argus, winter 1996.161 Jasper Stevens presented with the half mile sea race trophy by Jim Wild, c. 1998.

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I can always remember when we first went down there. We used to go in the old North Road swimming pool. At that time you used to have to pay the Swimming Club to go in. There was this old guy on there. He and another guy called Jim Wild used to run it. I called it the Old Guard. This guy, Mr White, was a bit of a crusty old chap and would collect the money. Then there was a new era. My parents started to run the Club with some others. There was Nina Paolella, Frank Paolella and Nina’s father, Peter – who we called Pop – Ken Deeley and Brenda Deeley. There were some others but they are the ones prominent in my mind. Peter, or Pop, used to be on the door, very firm – let nobody in without paying. But he was a nice friendly smiley face. My dad used to get really wound up with things and wanted it done just so, whereas my mum was quite calm. She used to teach the young ones with Nina. And funny enough my father couldn’t swim. Nina couldn’t swim either but she used to teach the young ones to swim. She was brilliant at it, but she couldn’t swim a stroke! They then left and a new new era came in. My brother was helping out, and his wife and my sister do the secretarial work down there. My son’s been in the Club for quite a number of years now, including the water polo team. My brother and sister and nephews and nieces as well, so we’ve all been in the Club. A big part of our life. It’s one big family I think.

ALAn WALdeR Born 1953

When I was younger we used to go in the summer.We used to swim out and dive underneath the Palace Pier, where the boards are. Money used to drop through, from the people up above, the change from their pockets, and you could collect £2 or £3 under there. Then we used to go up to the pie and mash shop, which is now the Bingo shop, and get ourselves some lunch. I can remember regularly doing that, swimming under the pier, but there weren’t that many days when you could actually see down to the bottom. It was quite murky normally, but when it was nice and clear it was quite good fun.

Another thing we used to do was a lunchtime training session with Maudie Ottaway, who was from the Ladies’ Brighton Swimming Club, but we all used to mingle between the Brighton Swimming Club and the Brighton Ladies’ Club. We used to do a swimming session there when I was doing competitive swimming. We used to go in the morning – sometimes 7.00 in the morning – then at lunchtime, and then go down in the evening. And the lunchtime session in the summer, we all used to go down to the Arch in the afternoon and spend time down there sunbathing, swimming, mucking about in the sea, coming up the pier when you shouldn’t, and generally spending the summer holiday on the beach. It was great fun. Sometimes the weather here wasn’t that good, but when the waves started rolling in it was the best fun ever.

taken from an interview made on the 24th november 2012

162 Trophies won by Alan Walder, including Brighton Swimming Club championship swimming, Sussex championship swimming and Southern Counties Championship swimming, c. 1970. 163 Newspaper cutting, c. 1975.

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I remember when I was about 15 or 16 and my mother used to work for what we used to call the South Down Bus Company, which was down here just off St James Street, just off the Steine. She used to work in an office with Jean Bradstock who was an all-year-round sea swimmer. This would have been 1970 and I was just in awe to think that somebody would go swimming every morning, even outside the months of July and August. It’s so funny I remember her name and being in awe of her, and here I am doing it myself.

It very much is a state of mind. You see things from a perspective that few people have had the luxury or the benefit of seeing. Just like looking at Brighton from the sea when you’re at sea level and looking at the pier from the sea. Looking up and then doing backstroke and seeing seagulls come down a foot from your head, investigating you. Nobody’s ever going to see that. You know swimming when the water’s clear, just seeing the bottom of the channel round the pier, it’s a whole package of things. BOB BICKneLL Born 1955

Watching the sun rise, depends on where you are, but to be at the end of the pier and to be looking over to the east and see the sun rising above the Marina is just something else. Equally, just seeing the sun coming through the stanchions and the way it highlights the engineering of the pier. Sometimes in heavy rainfall, to be swimming with the rain hitting your shoulders and your back. If you tread water you can just hear it hitting. You can see it. It’s like little shots all around you as it’s hitting the water.


164 Bob Bicknell © Mike Harvey, 2010.

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Diving under the pier, you find people drop coins. It’s not like you can just swim under the pier and you can see loads of money, you can’t, because there’s lots of stones, lots of starfish; there’s lots of treasure under there. The money, because the copper content turns blue, it’s very pretty, but nevertheless, what’s pretty doesn’t always wash when you’re trying to buy a drink in a pub. But if you say, ‘that’s fresh from under the pier. It’s legal, it’s money, you just need to scratch the blue off’, or, ‘you can use this and tell the next person that money came from under the pier’ . . . Some people like the story attached to it and other people say,

‘just give me some clean money. Keep the dirty money to yourself’.

I’ve got a bowl full of old money, so you might think, ‘what use is old money?’. You can’t exchange it for anything. It’s very interesting, particularly when your family, cousins, young children and you look at a bowl of old money, all the old coins. That’s an old sixpence, that’s a ha’penny, and that’s a farthing. You still find farthings, ha’pennies, and lots of old pennies. I suppose you could tell the history of the pier by the different tokens that they’ve had over the years, and the different stalls that they’ve had. In one area I kept on finding little bullets, spent cartridges, because there was a shooting range above.

We’ve set up a table and chairs under the pier, with ashtrays and pint glasses, and dived down and tried to take photographs of each other sitting at the table. It’s hilarious. It’s just good fun.

Me and some of the girls, we treasure hunt. Any litter, you will see it all over my house. But these bits of junk are treasure. This is a broken piece of jewellery, they’re freshwater pearls. I’ve found lots of old pocket watches. They might have a missing face or a barnacle but I think it’s very symbolic to find something like that under the pier, and create a piece of art from the treasures.

EilEEn REmEdios BORN 1957

It was through diving that I met up with people who swam with Brighton Swimming Club, and that was the beginning of it all.

taken from an interview made on the 11th March 2012

165 Eileen Remedios © Mike Harvey, 2010.

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This is it then, one bite of the cherry. Never again will I put myself through this. And I got in the water on a beautifully clear day, flat sea, at 7.15 in the morning and I just swam until 3 o’clock the next morning, nonstop, until I reached France. I was very positive actually, because I was so used to solo swimming, without the support of my kids looking on, my husband, my coach Mark, all egging me on the whole time. I hadn’t actually banked on that being so uplifting. It was a day out until about 13 hours in, and then it started to really be hard work. I hit a wall and thought, ‘why am I doing this? This is absolute lunacy!’. And the weather kicked up very, very quickly. I was ploughing myself through waves and Force 6, which is quite a hefty wind, and that really slowed me up. I was more under the wave than on top for about six hours. But then I do love the waves and it was part of my training, and here in Brighton is the best training ground in the world because it’s very temperamental, lots of currents. I pushed through that quite quickly and then I missed the landing point at Cap Gris Nez – 20 minutes was all it was; 20 minutes into my tide and I could feel the boat turning me round and I was in for another good six hours, so head down and off we went. It did change my life. It was a life-changing experience in terms of total endurance, but I literally got back four days after. Four days rest, then I got back in and swam round the pier.

fIOnA SOuThWeLL Born 1958 166 Newspaper cutting of Fiona Southwell collected by Brighton Swimming Club member Keith Marlton, The Argus, 7th July 2008. AMS 6946/2/3167 Jabez Wolffe, 1910.

In 1910, Brighton Swimming Club member Jabez Wolffe made an abortive attempt to swim the Channel, which, according to his obituary in The Times on 23rd October 1943, was one of 22 unsuccessful attempts by him. For the Brighton Swimming Club gala in 1910, he gave an exhibition of swimming as though on a Channel swim. At a given signal, the swimming pool lights were turned off so that he could rest and be fed in the water, similar to the Channel at night.

taken from an interview made on the 2nd March 2012

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Somebody said it’s a psychological thing. You tell yourself, ‘well I did it yesterday so I can do it today. It can’t be that much colder than yesterday’. And that’s how you get get through the winter. That’s how you do it through the winter. You do it every day and your brain just thinks, ‘I did it yesterday and it’s not that long ago, it can’t be that much colder’, and that’s how you do it. Day by day. You just don’t notice. And the next thing you know it’s summer again.

It’s about being in nature, and part of the universe really. It can feel massive when you’re out there. We usually swim very early in the morning. You sometimes have mornings where you can see the sun rising on one side and you’ve got a massive big moon shining on the other side. That’s another thing. It’s not just the swimming, it’s the time of day that we do it, which is quite special. If we went down onto that beach by Brighton Pier later on in the day it would just be a different universe completely, but at 7.00 o’clock in the morning nobody’s up – we’ve got the whole place to ourselves. It’s really magical.

Yvonne Luna BORN 1958

I really like swimming next to the pier. I also feel quite safe because if something happened there’s people about and people can see you, and there is always light and it’s always different. Every day is different.The waves are different, the tides different, the current is different, seasons different. It’s never the same, it’s never ever boring. Different people are down different days. We have a really good time socially.

We come from the sea don’t we? It’s like the mother ocean and going back into nature and going back home really. It would be so nice if everyone could experience that in such a high-tech world, living in boxes, surrounded by a lot of pollution, a lot of microwaves and electricity. To have that natural thing is hugely important: the ozone, the air, the waves, the rhythm and also not being completely in control. We want to be in control but we can’t with nature. You don’t know what the current’s going to do on one particular day, you have to judge it and you have to fit in with it, and it can teach us a lot in many ways. And that’s a good thing.

My health has hugely improved. I’m fitter now at almost 50 than I’ve ever been in my life and I can do more now. Lots of different things. I’m rarely ill and it’s often the case that as you get older you get iller – more sick – but in my case it’s the other way round.

MARTINA WATTS BORN 1962taken from an interview made on the 18th February 2012

taken from an interview made on the 14th March 2012168 Martina Watts © Kevin Meredith, 3rd October 2010.169 Yvonne Luna © Kevin Meredith, 16th May 2007.

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I had just turned 15, and prior to the race my dad assured me that I should put on Vaseline to keep warm. It ended up on my goggles also, which made them virtually useless as I couldn’t see anything. As a result, at the end of the race I couldn’t see the other swimmers ahead of me and for a brief period thought I must have won! In reality, I think I came 21st. It was quite a choppy sea too! There were loads of old men in the race. Only men were entering at that time. Women weren’t, I think, permitted to enter at that time.

PAUL SMITH BORN 1965

When it’s a bumpy day, I’m conscious about where I am in relation to the pier, how I am feeling, and particularly the cold. For two consecutive years I’ve managed to swim around the pier every single month, regardless of the cold, so even when it was 4 degrees [40˚F] in January, I was able to swim round the pier, just in me shorts as I normally would do, and maybe an extra layer on my head.

DAMIAN McIVER BORN 1967taken from an interview made on the 19th July 2012

170 The Leader, July 1980.171 Damian McIver, before 5C (41°F) swim © Kevin Meredith, 7th January 2010.

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Brighton is identified as the heart of sea swimming in the UK. I think where the Brighton Swimming Club fits in there is a key aspect.

There are no islands to swim to in Brighton, no causeways or peninsulas to aim for. You’ve got one big flat coastline. What makes swimming in Brighton so interesting is, you’ve got two piers that can be swum around, through, between and everything like that.

I used to live in Norfolk Place down by the Peace Statue so my knowledge of the West Pier is a lot better than my knowledge of the Palace Pier. I remember swimming out around the West Pier and studying it on a low tide and which channels you could go down, which ones you have to avoid, and then swimming through on a high tide. There aren’t many other people who’ve actually been in the middle of the West Pier, so I love that. The Palace Pier I have less knowledge about, but I always love swimming around it, down to the Marina, coming back, swimming through the Palace Pier and out to the red buoy in front of the West Pier, and doing these sort of figure-of-eight loops for my training. And interestingly, looking at the buildings on the seafront, judging my progress by them.

Even though it’s a relatively flat seascape, if you break it up into piers, Marina walls, cafés and statues, and Hove Lawns, you can actually create different swims out of it.

Simon murie Born 1970taken from an interview made on the 11th september 2012

172 Simon Murie. 173 Angus Macfadyen © Mark Baynes.

In the autumn of 2008 I moved to Brighton, for the sea. I discovered Brighton Swimming Club. I said, ‘I’m planning to swim the Channel. Would it be ok if I come along and join you?’. The answer was a very friendly, ‘yes’.

My objective was to get strong in the water and try to understand the flavour of the sea, which varies each and every day. You never know what to expect. Training for my solo Channel swim in the sea over the last couple of years was very intense. I had to be incredibly determined and never would I get into the sea or the swimming pool and not complete a swim I had planned to swim.

In the sea I feel lots of different things. It depends what the sea is doing. I feel a sense of freedom, exhilaration, sometimes adventure and excitement. I prefer a choppier sea, a sea that makes me work a bit harder. Sometimes it feels as if you’re in a bowl of jelly, it’s such an unstable environment and totally unpredictable, and it’s pretty hard work. Other times you get great big swells coming through and it’s a nice, even, calculable movement.

I’ll be back to swim in the sea having left Brighton. I will miss it enormously, the adventure of it all and the camaraderie. Brighton Swimming Club is unique. We’re all a bit crazy, from completely different backgrounds. Somehow we coexist. Having the support of Brighton Swimming Club over the last few years has given me strength, the interest in what I’ve been doing, the love that people have shown, the support that people have given me.

Angus MAcfAdyen Born 1971taken from an interview made on the 22nd June 2012

It was all-consuming. Anyone who wants to train to do a Channel swim has to think about giving up almost everything else.

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Swimming in the sea is different every time. When you get into a groove though, 20 minutes, 10, 15 minutes in, it becomes like a meditation really, feeling the movement of the swell of the waves, feeling what the water’s doing and being aware of that all the time, anticipating what it’s going to do next so you know how to manoeuvre your way through it. It’s very ‘zen’. It brings you into the moment all the time. It’s very meditative.

I’ve done a couple of Channel relays since I joined the Club as well, which has been amazing. I never expected that to happen. I joined in April and in September I was in the middle of the Channel, and the same again this year. That was a kind of dream of mine when I was a kid, that I’d do a solo. I haven’t done a solo but just even the fact that I’ve started making steps in that direction. . .

So basically, it’s either a two-man, three-man, four-man, whatever. This was a six-man, in both cases. You just set the order of swimmers. Normally the fastest go first. Each swimmer swims for an hour, next swimmer jumps in, swims round that swimmer, he starts swimming and then the previous swimmer gets out. It’s strictly an hour each swimmer. The first time it took us around 12 hours and it was perfectly flat, really good conditions. Amazing conditions. Freakily good conditions apparently, and I swam hour six. I swam into the sunset basically. I swam into the night. It was beautiful. And then the last six hours of the swim we swam through the night.

ALEX DOWNEY BORN 1974

You’ve got to have a lot of respect for the sea because it’s powerful and you’re kind of its guest. I feel for the water really. I feel for what’s going on with the tides, what’s going on with the waves, choosing your moment to breathe well. It’s exhilarating. Sometimes you turn around and you see your friends swimming 10 or 15m behind you in a huge swell and it just looks awesome.

Today I went down before 7.00 and I swam by myself. It was quite calm, a nice sea, so I went to the helter-skelter on the pier. I usually pair up with somebody. It depends on the level of technique, the speed.

It can be very rough at high tide and if the wind is strong, sometimes you can’t get in. We sometimes sit on the ground and have a kind of shower.

If the water temperature is lower, it’s quite hard to go round the pier. It’s quite challenging to turn the first corner. Then, somehow, it’s easier. You see the goal. Suddenly your emotion is changed. You can get rid of the anxiety. Great feeling!

The longest I’ve done, I’ve swum from Hove Lagoon to the Palace Pier. I felt really good after.

Shoichi YanagiSawa BORN 1970taken from an interview made on the 2nd March 2012

174 Alex Downey, Channel swim with Team Starrfish, 8th August 2012.175 Shoichi Yanagisawa © Kevin Meredith, 13th January 2010.

taken from an interview made on the 14th november 2012

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I’m not a sporty swimmer. I’d refer to myself as a sea bather.

176 Lindy Dunlop and swimmer’s legs © Kevin Meredith. 177 Len Chapman © Kevin Meredith, 11th March 2004. 178 Snowy Leo © Kevin Meredith, 2nd February 2009. 179 David Sawyers © Kevin Meredith, 6th November 2007.180 Brighton Pier © Kevin Meredith, 8th August 2008.

I remember swimming when the first Fat Boy Slim beach party was on. That was pretty epic. I had my speedos on and the crowd just turned and looked at me and went ‘speedo! speedo! speedo!’.

I had just moved to Brighton, and basically my friends, we’d all got this big house together on Norfolk Square. My friend had this book called the Cheeky Guide to Brighton. I was looking through it and there was this one thing about the Brighton Swimming Club. It was written in a kind of satirical way and mentioned this group of Englishmen who would go swimming in the sea all year round, and it gave the address. In the book it said that they meet at 10.30 every day and I thought, ‘I’m self-employed. I can do that’. It didn’t mention that there was this 7.30 lot who would swim before work. So I kind of went down there one day, as it said you can come for a few free taster sessions, and there was a bloke there called Len. And Jim Wild. Jim Wild, he died a couple of years ago, but he was a hero to the Swimming Club. There are records of him swimming in the sea in the 1960s when it was so cold it was like the edge of the water was mushy with ice. I think Len was a Lancaster Bomber pilot and the other guy built spitfires. It was kinda like going swimming with legends. It was a bit slow, and I thought, ‘this is cool’.

KEVIN MEREDITH BORN 1978taken from an interview made on 10th February 2012

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Amazing, Bonding, Brilliant, Cold, Choppy, Dangerous, Delightful, Excellent, Exciting, Fantastic, Friendship-creating, Great, Healthy, Interactive, Interesting, Joyful, Kool, Lovely, Luxury, Majestic, Magnificent, Nothing quite like it, Outstanding, Purpose, Perfect, Rejuvenating, Ridiculous, Sporty, Special, Sublime, Streamlined, Terrific, Tiring, Trust, Unmissable, Unforgetful, Unregrettable, Wet, Xciting, Yay, Yearning, Zoolicious

A small group of young members of Brighton Swimming Club worked with artist / film maker Lindsey Smith to record interviews with Club members, visit the Floating Memories exhibition at the Brighton Fishing Museum, take part in a workshop at the BBC and play word association games, resulting in this A–Z of words generated in response to the feelings that swimming gives them.


The Club is saddened to report the death of its former Chairman John Ottaway. John’s health had declined in recent years and last year saw him step down from the Chairmanship of the Club. John took on the job of Chairman, of what was then a very different sports club, in 1986 when our previous Chairman, Bill Tuppen, died unexpectedly. Although he was not, at that time, the obvious natural successor, John stepped up to the task and guided the Club through some difficult times – always with a clear vision of the best way forward. He had an uncanny talent for spotting the best solution to any problem. Taking advice when it was offered, and at other times blazing a trail of his own – always with the best interest of the Club at heart and the support of the Club’s Committee. John was born to be involved in swimming from the very first week of his life, when his parents enrolled him in Brighton SC, over 65 years ago. He had connections with the city’s two other main swimming clubs. His formidable mother Maudie was for many years the leading light at Brighton Ladies’ SC, which eventually evolved into Brighton Dolphin SC. He also played water polo for Shiverers during their National League days in the 1970s. John was involved with several areas of the Club’s disciplines, including competitive swimming (his name appears on several trophies), surf lifesaving and diving. But it was as a water polo player where he really excelled. John’s defensive talents were well known locally, and soon required a bigger stage than the County League. So it was that he became a vital member of the Shiverers National League water polo team in the early 1970s. As he was now able to play on a national stage, he also caught the eye of national team selectors, and he attended trials to play for his country. He also had a connection with Polytechnic SC, the nation’s top club team for many years. In his late thirties he had his first heart bypass operation, but was then able to return to water polo for a number of years. He took up polo refereeing, and was very highly regarded. At the end of his water polo career he turned his attention to another area of the club’s activities, this time as an administrator – competitive swimming. It’s no coincidence that the Club’s increasing profile in this arena has been during his Chairmanship. His support for the coaching staff was exemplary.

John was able to dedicate much of his time to the Club’s needs when he was able to take early retirement from BT at the age of 50. Their loss was the Club’s gain, as he worked long hours implementing new systems for running galas. This was an area in which he later put in many hours for the County ASA. In recognition of his work for the County, he served as County President in 2000. Earlier this year he was also presented with an ASA Regional Award to mark the many years service given to the Club and County. The sadness at his passing will be particularly felt by the year-round sea swimmers. In recent years John had become one of their number and he enjoyed the social occasion of the weekend swims, always leading the banter; dishing out the teasing – and happy to accept it in return.

John made all the running in securing the £50,000 grant towards moving to a new Arch. It’s particularly sad to note that he was never able to visit the about-to- be-completed facility. John’s style of Chairmanship owed a lot to his personality. In equal measure, he could knock heads together when needed, and then take the softly softly approach, just as the need arose. Even those he might have bruised along the way will not deny his absolute dedication to the Club, and its success in the County. Terms of Endearment: a personal memoryI’d known him for over 40 years, and he was a dear friend. In the way only good friends are able to do, we never failed to be rude to each other whenever we met. Both knowing that it was just a game. For some years I’d teased him about his ability always to get his own way (good job it was always in the best interests of the Club). To this end, my name for him, whenever we met, was ‘Führer’. In turn, I can’t remember a time when he didn’t greet me with: ‘Ah, Stevens, you old basket.’ Except the word he used wasn’t ‘basket’. I shall miss that. Jasper StevensActing Chairman, Brighton SC.

This obituary, written by Jasper Stevens in 2012, has been included as it demonstrates the importance of recording memories and is also a record of John’s achievements and lifelong work for Brighton Swimming Club.


EXPLORE THE BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB ARCHIVES STORED AT THE EAST SUSSEX RECORD OFFICE, SCREEN ARCHIVE SOUTH EAST AND A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS THAT HAVE BEEN RECORDED THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE FLOATING MEMORIES PROJECT.

PICTURES INCLUDE THE CODE AMS 6946, WHICH REFERS TO THE ITEM’S CATALOGUE ENTRY, STORED AT THE EAST SUSSEX RECORD OFFICE. IF YOU WISH TO VIEW ANY OF THESE ARCHIVES IN PERSON, SIMPLY QUOTE THIS NUMBER. ALTERNATIVELY YOU CAN VIEW THE ARCHIVES ONLINE AT www.flickr.com/photos/floatingmemories

THE DVD INCLUDED WITH THIS CATALOGUE ALLOWS YOU TO WATCH THE WONDERFUL FOOTAGE THAT WAS TAKEN BY BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB MEMBER ROGER DUNFORD BETWEEN 1946 AND 1954.

TO ACCOMPANY THESE SILENT FILMS, A SPECIALLY RECORDED SOUNDTRACK HAS BEEN MADE BY STUDENTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON AND BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB MEMBER BELLA KARDASIS. LAYERED WITHIN THE MUSIC ARE EXTRACTS OF INTERVIEWS FROM MEMBERS OF BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB, BOTH RECOLLECTING MOMENTS IN THE FILM AND TALKING ABOUT THEIR SWIMMING MEMORIES TODAY.

THROUGHOUT THIS CATALOGUE A SERIES OF QUOTES HAVE BEEN SELECTED FROM OVER 40 HOURS OF INTERVIEWS MADE WITH BRIGHTON SWIMMING CLUB MEMBERS, PAST AND PRESENT. IF YOU WISH TO LISTEN TO ANY OF THE RECORDINGS PLEASE VISIT www.floatingmemories.co.uk/oralhistories

Published in 2013 by Floating Memories Brighton Swimming Club

[email protected] Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Paul Farrington, Designer Lindy Dunlop, Editor Juliette Buss, Project Manager

Images on pages 6, 26, 52, 66, 74 and 91 from the James Gray Collection, the photographic archive of the Regency Society. www.regencysociety.org

ResearchJudy WoodmanDavid Simkins Anna ZehnpfundDarren TaffinderLindsey Tydeman

DigitisationMladen GrabovacHelen ReynoldsRene GonzalesDarren TaffinderMadeleine Swift

InterviewsJudy WoodmanAnthony Elliot Sheila SelwayDarren TaffinderSusi Maxwell StewartLiz BruchetKatie Wright Higgins Molly Carter

TrainingAndrew Bennett Alan DeinKevin Meredith John RichesHeather York

Project PartnersAndrew Bennett, East Sussex Record OfficeJohn Riches, Queenspark PublishingFrank Gray and Jane King, Screen Archive South EastKevin Bacon, Brighton MuseumPaul Jordan, Brighton MuseumAndy Durr, Brighton Fishing MuseumFred Gray, University of SussexHeather York, Brighton MuseumThe Regency SocietyUniversity of Brighton

This catalogue is dedicated to Roger Dunford and John Ottaway and the memories of Brighton Swimming Club members, past and present. Special thanks go to David Sawyers for his inspirational discussions in the Arch and Dudley Seifert for his connections to the past. Paul Farrington would personally like to thank everyone who took part in the Floating Memories project, especially Judy Woodman, Andrew Bennett, Andy Durr, the volunteers and all the members of Brighton Swimming Club who participated in this project.

179 Photograph showing members of the Brighton Swimming Club advertising OXO, c. 1910. AMS 6946/14/36

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Cover image: Brighton Swimming Club, albumen print by Benjamin Botham, 1863. AMS 6946/2/3

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Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Floating Memories focuses on archiving over 150 years of the sporting and sea bathing heritage of the Brighton Swimming Club. In summer 2011, work began to create an accessible archive that delves into a fascinating and extensive heritage of swimming in Brighton using archives that date back to 1860. The project was initiated by graphic designer and Club member Paul Farrington who became intrigued by the rich and colourful history of the Club and the wealth of material held in the archive. Until this project, the Club’s archives had been largely unseen and unknown to members of the Club, the public or historians. Artefacts now properly documented and conserved include reels of unique 16mm film footage from the 1940s, letterpress posters, scrapbooks, gala programmes, badges, competition adverts, letters, photographs and newspaper cuttings.

The legacy of this project is an archive at the East Sussex Record Office, an online archive, a film archive at Screen Archive South East, a permanent exhibition at the Brighton Fishing Museum and the website www.floatingmemories.co.uk, which makes the heritage of swimming and sea bathing in Brighton available for everyone to discover and enjoy. Learning and participation have been integral to the project, and a series of opportunities for volunteers’ participation and engagement were created using both the old and new archive material through events that included memory days, exhibitions, walking tours, publications, website, film screenings and live music. The Club’s archives have been at the heart of this project and with hundreds of items available there have been extensive opportunities for volunteers to participate in heritage learning. Work throughout the duration of the project has included research, training, oral history, exhibitions and events. It has involved over 40 volunteers, 65 students, and a range of professionals from the arts and heritage sector and beyond.

PROJECT PARTNERS

MEMORIESFLOATING

Documents

Archives / Memories. Brighton Swimming Club 1860–2013