The class would travel by coach (a Bedford Duple, if I recall) down the Uxbridge Road, and we'd troop off to the changing rooms. The swimming pool was to the right of the baths, a row of cubicles, a white enamelled bath in each. It was here that the working classes could sit and soak in warm, soapy water, and get clean for sixpence.
Those were the baths (which, having a bathroom at home, we didn't have to use). Then there was the pool.
Now... was there such as thing as First Class and Second Class pool? I can vaguely remember... or was this at Acton? One with a balcony? No trace on the Net...
The adjacent pool was white tiled, Victorian, smelling strongly of chlorine (if I close my eyes I can imagine the smell), with changing cubicles on either side (male to the left, female to the right). There was a pile of wooden (later expanded polystyrene) floats for learners to grasp as they propelled themselves with their legs, a lifebelt or two, some nets on sticks to remove debris. All was well-run, but showing signs of age. This swimming pool was a far cry from the modern, Olympic-length pools that the council would build in Northolt and Perivale. But at the time, in the early 1960s, pools like this were the norm (I also swam at the Brentford and Acton pools, both of similar vintage and style).
As well as the chlorine smell, the other characteristic of pools of this age were the pool attendants - chaps called Reg or Vic, wearing white slacks, white vests, white plimsolls - trim of physique, in their forties or fifties (probably ex-Army PT instructors). Their chief attribute was their tuneful whistling. They would use the unique acoustic properties of the swimming pool to optimal use whistling popular melodies from the 1930s and '40s.
Apart from school trips to the Ealing Baths, I'd also go from time to time with my father and brother, especially in summer. I'd be dressed in shorts (over my swimming trunks), sandals and t-shirt, so I'd be into the nearest empty cubicle to get undressed, and in the water in seconds.
Note: This was an age of social trust. No one nicked things from cubicles. You'd just find an empty one, leave your clothes (and watch,wallet and keys if you were grown up), go for a swim, and, having remembered your cubicle number, you'd return to find it all there where you left it.
Things obviously got worse by the time Northolt and Perivale swimming pools were opened; these had lockers, with keys, that you safety-pinned to your trunks.
Below: Ealing Town Hall, 1900. The baths were directly behind, entrance from Longfield Avenue, the road to the left of the Town Hall.
