3-039-070 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Rossall School Baths, Fleetwood, Lancashire, 1871. 'The great public school at Rossall, near Fleetwood, in Lancashire, is not unworthy of that county in enterprise and the spirit of improvement. It was the first to enrol a school rifle corps (the example was next followed by Eton), and it has provided itself with swimming-baths on a scale unequalled by any other school in the United Kingdom. On looking at the handsome structure, with its engine-house and suite of attendants' rooms, one cannot but be struck with the vast importance that the training of boys is assuming in the upper-middle classes of modern England. The baths are 122 ft. long by 30 ft. broad; the depth is 6 ft. 6 in. at the deeper end, but shallowing to 4 ft. at the other. In the winter months they are warmed up to 61 deg. or 62 deg. by injected steam. They will accommodate about fifty boys at a time; and when that number, or more, of striplings "just let loose from school" are diving, swimming, and plunging all together, the liveliness of the scene may be easily imagined. Our Illustration is from a photograph by Messrs. Hill and Saunders, Oxford and Eton'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.