All change...

The view coming down Bath Road this morning was slightly different. For the first time in just over two weeks, there was no skip obscuring the workshop doors. Instead, there was a trailer bearing the steels that will support the new floor, each marked to show its place in the structure. They were taken through the workshop onto the stage and then placed almost ‘in situ’.

The view coming into the auditorium this morning was enormously different. For the first time in just over sixty years, you can see half a swimming pool, although at the moment it looks rather like an Ancient Roman under-floor heating system. This is as much of the pool as we are going to see, as the rear section – or, to give it its technical term, the shallow end – is still boarded over and will remain so. A new covering will be laid on top of this floor, still structurally in excellent condition, and this is where the new front of house corridor will be. The only other visible change to the pool before it starts being covered over again will be the removal of the brick pillars that the steels are effectively replacing.

We have, surprisingly, also found some more items of historical interest. There are a series of small metal rings - you can just make one out immediately above the brick pillar (left) - at what would have been water level and the presumption is that these would have been to fix a rope around the edge of the pool for swimmers to hold on to.