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Building a Swimming Pool (continued)

Autumn and Winter 1962-3

By now many of the workers were showing familiarity with the job, and some were showing real skill; a new technical vocabulary had been learnt, and talk was of tie-rods with their water bar, of cones and set pins, of walings, standards, ledgers and putlogs, not to mention soldiers that were reluctant to stand upright and always had to be supported.

Work proceeded vigorously throughout the Autumn term. The whole of the week except Sunday mornings was covered by 19 shifts of 1½ to 3 hours each; nor did the work always stop at dusk, since a kind offer by a school parent made possible one evening's work each week by floodlight. Some 160 children worked right through the term, many of them for several periods each week. In addition, there was a special four weeks' effort made, when four entire classes each worked a whole four-day week, right through the school day, without dropping their normal evening preparation or private week-end studies. Though the heaviest manual tasks were naturally undertaken by the boys, the girls took their full share of work throughout the construction of the pool, and showed particular skill in fixing the steel and shuttering.

The Winter that followed was the one that nobody is likely to forget. Ice and snow took over the site for the greater part of the term, but no damage was done to the concrete shell, and work was renewed as soon as the first thaw set in. Close on a hundred children came out to work, many of them for more than one spell during the week. This was perhaps the most testing time of all - the weather was still bitterly cold, and it almost hurt to hold the metal scaffolding. The Engineer recalls with admiration the way in which the children "hung on" until the spring finally came. During the first week of the Easter holidays, twenty-five picked and proved volunteers took part in a successful work camp. When it finished, the whole shell of the pool had been completed except for two main wall sections.

Summer term 1963

This was a term of necessary "finishing off" before the test filling could be undertaken, to see how watertight the pool was. The steel shuttering and scaffolding that had been erected and dismantled fifty times or more began to be removed, the final shape of the pool began to be revealed, and weeks of hacking, chipping, scraping, hole filling, site clearing and drain digging followed. Wimpey's Overseas Manager had written: "Frankly, I did not think you stood a chance of doing this fairly ambitious job under at least two years." Yet only sixteen months had passed since the first turf was dug, and now the deep end was being filled to test water-tightness, and the school was enjoying a first fortnight's bathing, before term ended, in the pool that it had made.

There was, of course, still much to be done: "back filling" the earth on the outside of the walls, all the draining and filtration installation (including the building of a solid brick filter house), the spectators' stand, the concrete surround, the erecting of diving boards, the smoothing of the inside walls, not to mention the heating installation and the building of changing rooms and lavatories which would follow later. But the pool was in being. The remaining work needed different skills, involving brick laying and plumbing, and from now on Percy Cook, co-head of the School's Maintenance Department, was in charge of the whole project, and the children became builders' and plumbers' mates.

Barrowing concrete for a wall section. Barrowing concrete for a wall section.
The shell completed, Summer 1963 The shell completed, Summer 1963.

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