Waterworks and Worms

"Around the river" between the Fulling Mill that so attracts photography and Ladywell Lane is the site of the open air swimming pool that existed when I was a child.  It is now a memorial garden "a quiet place to remember the fallen of the 1914 - 1918 war".

But I remember it as a swimming pool.  I suppose it must have cost something to enter as I cannot remember often going there.  The pool was fed from the river via a weir system made of concrete - this arrangement took my interest somewhat more than the pool itself.  What I remember mainly of the pool was the slimy walls and bottom and the tiny red squiggly "worms" in the water.

There was a wall with a wire fence above it separating the shallow kids end from the main part of the pool.  My sister and I used to walk along that wall, as indeed we did with most walls that presented themselves.  In the picture you can see a boy and a girl somewhat precariously doing just this - I cannot be sure whether it is my sister and I but it looks as though it could be.  You will also note that no-one is in the water!