Swimming pool at former HMS Ganges

Swimming pool at former HMS Ganges

This swimming pool was built between 1936 and 1937 at the former HMS Ganges Royal Naval Training Establishment. It is a substantially intact facility that demonstrates the architectural and engineering standards of interwar naval recreational provision.

The building is roughly rectangular in plan, with a double-height swimming pool flanked by single-storey projections wrapping around the east, south and west sides. The double-height pool has a pitched roof gabled to the north and south, with a long raised rooflight covered in slate and corrugated metal sheeting. The single-storey projections have flat roofs with glazed box lanterns over each room. The walls are constructed of red brick laid in English bond, with cast-concrete copings. The north and south gable ends feature tumbled brickwork with cast-concrete copings to their parapets. Each gable has two projecting stair surrounds and three windows, with the central window longer than the others and framed by horizontal bands of cast concrete. All windows are metal-framed.

The south and north elevations feature timber doors composed of three vertical square panels. The front entrance on the south side and side entrances have cast-concrete steps to double timber-panelled doors with flat cantilevered canopies; the front entrance also has a three-paned overlight. The rear entrance (to the first-floor spectators' gallery) comprises eight steps flanked by a red-brick plinth wall with cast-concrete coping, leading to a single-storey red brick porch. The east and west elevations of the swimming pool have three-light clerestory windows running their length. The single-storey projections feature a variety of three-light windows or groups of three metal-framed windows. The east elevation has four large door openings to former workshops and boiler rooms; three of these retain industrial timber doors with strap hinges manufactured by Charles Collinge of Lambeth, each with a three-paned overlight. The west elevation has double doors at both its north and south ends.

Internally, the front entrance opens into a lobby leading to an entrance hall with a red tiled floor (possibly replaced in the mid-20th century) and white glazed tiles to dado height. Central double doors on the north wall of the entrance hall provide access to the swimming pool, flanked by L-plan stairs ascending to the first-floor spectators' gallery. From the east side of the entrance hall, a door leads through former offices to a corridor running along the east side of the swimming pool, with borrowed lights on its east wall opening onto a former workshop, two former boiler rooms, and basement access beneath the pool. From the west side of the entrance hall, a door leads to a changing room with glazed-tile walls and 12 partitioned changing cubicles on the north and south walls; each cubicle has glazed-tile partition walls, a glazed metal door stop, and a panelled door. Evidence of benches and wall hooks survives on the back wall of each cubicle. From the north-west corner of the changing room, a toilet with glazed-tile walls provides access to the swimming pool and connects to a further suite of two locker rooms and toilets flanking a central shower room off the west side of the pool. The south locker room retains three long frames of changing benches with hooks, though the timber benches are missing; the north locker room has only one frame surviving without a top rail or bench. Both toilets retain their glazed tiled walls and cubicle partitions with panelled wooden doors and glazed metal door stops. The central shower room retains its glazed-tile walls and may originally have comprised two separate shower rooms; a historic photograph shows the west wall of the swimming pool having two doors where there is now one large opening to the shower room.

The swimming pool itself is rectangular in plan, with a diving area at its north end (no diving boards remain) and a spectator area at the south end. A first-floor spectators' gallery provides viewing access. The exposed steel barrel-vaulted roof structure is supported on corbels over the spectators' gallery. The pool retains glazed tiles to its floor and retaining walls. The walkways surrounding the pool retain blue and white mosaic tiling in a chequerboard pattern with margins. The diving boards at the north end of the spectators' gallery were likely removed around 1976. The south side of the pool has two levels of cast-concrete bench plinths without timber benches, set in glazed-tile surrounds. Tubular steel steps in each corner appear to have been replaced with taller handrails in the late 20th century. The first-floor spectators' gallery is supported on reinforced concrete brackets over the walkway and extends almost the entire circumference of the pool, breaking only on the northern wall where the diving boards were formerly positioned, and on the south wall for a bowed supervisors' box. The two-stepped gallery has a narrow walkway around its perimeter and tubular curved metal railings to the poolside, with an additional rail at entrance points from the upper walkway. Two panelled doors on the north wall of the pool and spectators' gallery provide access to storerooms and a rear entrance.