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Open Air Swimming Pool - Manor (Bowden-Housesteads Woods)


ceegee

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There are some good photos on PS of the Swimming Pool under construction and when finished:

http://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?searchterms=bowden_houstead&action=search&keywords=all%3BCONTAINS%3B%25bowden_houstead%25%3B

The only other photos I can find on PS are from when the Sheffield Parkway is under construction.

This one from 1960, where the remains of the pool must be in the woods, over the head of the man crouching on the right of the shot:

http://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;u06920&pos=55&action=zoom&id=98237

... and one from a year later, where the woods are to the right of the white car. Houses on Bowden Woods Crescent can be seen on the extreme left of the photo.

The entire area would be changed beyond recognition, with the addition of the Mosborough Link Road in the early 1990's

http://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;s26262&pos=2&action=zoom&id=28689

The original Parkway from the first two photographs is the darkest road surface in the centre of the photograph. The addition of an additional carriage way (on the left of the original) and the on-off slip roads to the Mosborough Link Road have meant that any remains of the Pool have been excavated and built over long ago.

Attached are a couple of maps, with the location of the pool, using an OS map from 1950 superimposed on a current Google aerial view. The last photo is a street view of the location and the road sign is a marker to the actual location of the pool.

Hope this at least helps with some recognition of location and orientation, if not some actual historical facts about the place?

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The Manor Memories team did some research on it around the time when the Mosborough Parkway was being put in. I remember some photos from the excavations for the road being brought to the group, that had uncovered the remains of it. I don't know what happened to the information, maybe Oliver Blensdorf still has it? I can't remember if anything was put in one of the booklets they produced, which are available in Local Studies.

It's mentioned being opened in 1925 in the book Sheffield Growth of A City by H Keeble Hawson. I believe it was constructed as part of the schemes to help unemployed men in Sheffield. Certainly the nearby Prince of Wales Road was built by them.

Bowden woods itself had been purchased from the Duke of Norfolk in October 1911 for £6,000.

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