Dames Delight was one of Oxford’s most popular outdoor swimming pools.

Tucked away in the University Parks, it attracted hundreds of families every summer.

In 2013, in an article about the pool, we asked if anyone had pictures of people swimming or sunbathing there.

Well, nine years later, Elisabeth Adkins spotted the story online and has sent in a picture of her family enjoying a day there in 1944.

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It shows her grandfather, Ernest John Adkins (known as John), her father, John Robert Adkins, and Aunt Eleanor Adkins, now Stockley.

Elisabeth, of The Slade, Headington, writes: “My father’s family were evacuated from East London to Towersey, near Thame, during the war, while his father was in Iceland with the RAF.

Oxford Mail:

“He returned and worked for the RAF on coding in a big house with a white balcony in Pullen’s Lane, possibly Rye St Antony School, and the family moved to Bowness Avenue in Headington.

“My aunt and my father used to walk to Windmill Primary School across allotments, which I guess must be the site of the John Radcliffe Hospital now.”

As we recalled earlier, Dames Delight adjoined Parsons Pleasure, where men had bathed in the nude since the 16th century.

The myth grew that women did the same next door, but that was not true - everyone at Dame’s Delight had to cover up.

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When the pool opened in 1934, it didn’t have a name, but was quickly dubbed Dames Delight - and the name, although never official, stuck.

At first, it was for women only, but later it was opened for mixed bathing.

Among those who made regular use of the pool were women undergraduates and pupils at Oxford High School for Girls in North Oxford and Rye St Antony School in Pullens Lane, Headington.

It was often packed on hot days during the school summer holidays and at weekends.

By 1970, however, when the picture above was taken, it was in a rundown state, having been damaged by floods and vandals.

Attendances had dropped as heated indoor pools became more popular, and little was done to maintain it.

The Oxford Mail reported that “cubicle doors creaked on rusty hinges, safety rails hung crazily or had disappeared altogether and the water was turbid with twigs and sludge”.

Lady Wheare, wife of the Rector of Exeter College, led a fight to save the pool.

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She threatened to tell her daughters to bathe from the Parks’ bank of the River Cherwell - in contravention of Parks’ regulations - to persuade the University to restore the pool.

But the campaign fell on deaf ears and it never reopened.

Women were asked to leave boats approaching Parsons Pleasure and rejoin them on the other side to avoid embarrassment.

One reader, Dawn Griffis, recalled how her sister, June Alsford, in the early 1950s, borrowed a schoolboy friend’s blazer and cap to disguise herself as she passed in a boat.

Perhaps luckily for Ms Alsford, there wasn’t a naked man in sight!

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