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Moreen Simpson: Aberdeen’s Victorian councillors would be ashamed of their modern counterparts

There’s been zilch consulation about Aberdeen pool or library closures, let alone the chance to put individual cases to the council.

Learning to swim in Aberdeen once involved a rope and freezing temperatures (Image: Helen Hepburn)
Learning to swim in Aberdeen once involved a rope and freezing temperatures (Image: Helen Hepburn)

I’d be ashamed to be a councillor today, but not in the 1890s.

That’s when members of Aberdeen Corporation realised our beautiful silver sands were growing in popularity, and visitors needed a star attraction. City architect John Rust came up with an inspirational design for a Bathing Station, later known as the Beach Baths.

Plunk in the middle of the esplanade, supplied with sea water, it opened its stunning red-brick chimney and doors in 1898, proving a huge favourite with locals, as well as tourists.

In the days of ootside cludgies, families would troop along once a week for a hygienic dip, Turkish baths eventually installed. Like a sunken lagoon surrounded by balconies, it was an echo chamber for the screams and laughter of the bathers.

Many of us of a certain vintage will have technicolour memories of learning to swim. As I recall, the method was for an instructor to tie a rope roon yer waist, then just lug ye across the baltic depths.

Yes, we’d freeze, and the place was aye hoochin’, but it had a magic that kept drawing us there, even more than to the luxurious, heated Uptown (later Bon Accord) Baths: that glorious 1937 art deco building in Justice Mill Lane.

The landmark baths by the sea stood for all of 74 years, until those misbeguided cooncillors of the early 1970s decided it had to go. Like the whole of St Nicholas and George Streets, the baths could have been redeveloped and upgraded. Instead, our ill-advised and unimaginative city representatives were in bulldozer mode. And today’s visionless craiters seem to be stuck in the same gear.

Councillors, stand by fairness and democracy

Having sloughed off the wonderful Bon Accord Baths for others to salvage, they’ve now killed off the Beach Leisure Centre, the latest casualty of municipal madness. Opened after many delays in 1989, young and old revelled in it.

As well as providing different sports facilities, the pool’s flumes and waves were a huge draw. My quine was there with her pals every Sunday evening. My grandchildren had swimming lessons there – no rope! – as well as hours of just plain fluming fun.

Now, after little more than 30 years, it’s closed down. Nae money? Show a community-sympathetic accountant the books and I bet he or she could find a belter of a better way of saving the £700,000 which has done for two pools and six libraries.

Aberdeen’s busy Beach Baths, pictured in 1936 (Image: AJL)

However, I’m so delighted to see the communities haven’t accepted defeat, inviting councillors to a meeting next week, or they’ll take legal action. Go for it!

There’s been zilch consulation about any of these closures, let alone the chance to put their individual cases to the council. That sounds pretty iffy local government to me.

I challenge you, SNP and Lib Dem ruling councillors, to stand by fairness and democracy. Have the good grace to turn up for next week’s meeting. Listen to the people you represent and what they have to say.


Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press & Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970

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