by Vicky Halliday
Victoria Swimming Baths is making way for 600 student flats. The Halls of Residence will be oneof the highest university buildings in the country. It was never the most attractive building, built in the 1960s, but it will be sadly missed by Portsmouth residents who are already finding it difficult to travel up to the Mountbatten Centre for their morning swim! A quote from the old Victoria Swimming Pool site “Please note that Victoria Swimming Centre is now closed, however the 50m pool at the new Mountbatten Centre is now open” Wooo, good luck with the number 5 bus people….
Hopefully the development will go ahead smoothly, unlike other proposed developments in Portsmouth, and we won’t be left with a boarded-off wasteland for the next 15 years! There is already some discussion over who is footing the bill for demolition and whether the developers have the funding in place to complete the proposed building work. Only time will tell, as the saying goes.
That second to last picture literally makes me cry. About 4-5 years ago used to swim for Portsmouth Northsea and would have to train 5 days a week, twice a week at Victoria. The countless hours I spent looking up at that ceiling while doing backstroke, and how if you looked at it from a certain angle it looked a bit like a TIE fighter from Star Wars. Maybe I’m just being needlessly nostalgic, but I just can’t imagine it being gone forever.
Regardless, seeing it like that just brings a tear to my eye.