This series of caches take you on a tour around Oxford’s old open-air river bathing places, now derelict.
WARNING: TUMBLING BAY IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED AS A SWIMMING POOL AND CARRIES ALL THE USUAL DANGERS OF WILD WATER SWIMMING, INCLUDING UNDERWATER HAZARDS.
Oxford is a city of rivers, and river swimming has been a popular pastime here for centuries. In the 19th Century dedicated swimming spots began to open, with places to enter the water and facilities. These spots were in use for over 100 years, and Tumbling Bay was one of the most popular.
Tumbling Bay was opened in 1853 and extended in 1866. It is formed by two weirs on a Thames backwater, with a rectangular bathing pool between them. By 1876 1,000 people a day were visiting the pool in summer. It was originally a men-only pool, with women allowed in on Fridays from 1882 as long as they wore a bathing dress, which was supplied free. It wasn’t until 1913 that a separate, screened-off area was created for women, above the upper weir, so that they could bathe at any time. The segregation of the sexes was in force up until the 1950s. In the 1920s one visitor remembered the supervisor of the women’s pool, Miss Long, lifting up the clothes of a baby some children had brought to the pool to establish whether it was a boy or a girl. On discovering it was a boy, the children were told to leave the women’s pool as the baby wasn’t allowed in. (The Changing Face of West Oxford, Malcolm Graham).
The pool was known as ‘Tum’ locally, with ‘what’s the temperature at Tum’ being a common question in spring and summer. By the 1950s Tum had male and female changing rooms, diving boards and water slides into the former men’s pool. Access to the pools was by ferry punt across the river, as there was no access from Botley Road recreation ground until 1955.
Oxford Council shut all its river bathing pools in 1990 after popularity declined with the opening of heated indoor pools. Tumbling Bay is no longer maintained, but it is still possible to see the ladders leading into the water and the bases of the old changing rooms on the far side of the bridge. The weirs keep the central pool relatively free of debris, and this pool is quite shallow, but as this is not a maintained site it carries all the normal dangers of wild water swimming.
Pictures from www.pictureoxon.org.uk, reference numbers POX0072806, POX0005638, POX0123075, POX0005637