MY MOTHER, born in 1908 in Alnwick, Northumberland, and brought up by her grandmother, was not allowed to learn to swim, ride a bike or roller skate. She came to Oxford in 1936.

In 1943, when I was four, she held me up to see the swimmers in the first Temple Cowley Pool. What a pool that was.

Ten feet at the deep end and with three diving boards – high, medium and a spring board.

We also had separate male and female changing rooms.

Before I was 10 years old I had passed my 25 and 75 yards swimming test.

Oxford is a network of rivers and in the 1970s there was a huge drive to teach every child to swim. Every school raised funds for its own swimming pool.

Today's Letters

My three children learned to swim, but the pool we worked so hard to raise money for was soon acquired to build an addition to Donnington Health Centre.

I became a regular swimmer and swam for over 30 years, two to three times a week, until the council closed our pool.

I don’t swim any more, because I do not like “village changing” where both sexes go to the same area to change and shower. One has to shower in one’s swimming costume because the showers are communal.

The modest cultures in our midst desperately need to teach their children to swim, to avoid the tragedies that happen every year.

I recently noticed an advert on the bus inviting people to go swimming. So why doesn’t the council address the needs of modest swimmers and would-be swimmers?

The last pool to have these facilities was Temple Cowley Pool.

Pools are no longer built with a deep end. The taller people in our swimming group, which had to move to Barton Pool, stand head and shoulders above the water in the deep end.

How lucky we 1940s and 50s children were.

Pat Ross

Bowness Avenue,

Oxford