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FROM THE ARCHIVES WITH THANKS TO ARCHIVIST, PETER BURGESSS
Above: The site suggested for development was part of the Headmaster’s garden and to the west of the main buildings
THE SWIMMING POOL 1960-2009 The current RGS swimming pool is an impressive and much-loved facility in the school, however, it owes its origins to the incredible ambitions of Headmaster, Holland (RGS staff 1947-1968).
Parental contributions required! For those who weren’t around in the 1960s, this was when the Headmaster decided to donate his lawn to build an outdoor swimming pool. The cost of this was originally estimated to be approximately £10,000 (not including the value of the land). The Headmaster estimated that, with roughly 1,000 boys in the school, if every family sent him a cheque for £10 that would cover it! He may also have been appealing to local prep-school families! It didn’t go quite as smoothly in practice. Remember that it was not a fee-paying school at the time, and a large proportion of pupils came from relatively needy families (although we lived comfortably enough, we certainly didn’t all have cars or telephones, and central heating was extremely rare!). Various fundraising efforts were undertaken. My own mother made a cake which was raffled. There was a Fair at Broadfield, where the photographic society made people pay for dreadful portraits, which, of course, they did not see until later! The swimming pool fundraiser was largely a co-operative effort to improve the facilities. Moreover, at the time, newly-built secondary modern schools often had better physical facilities than older schools like Reigate Grammar, to the extent that less academic parents sometimes chose them for that reason. Roger Moreton (RGS 1958-1965) 60
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eadmaster TW Holland joined Reigate Grammar School in 1947, as one of only two Headmasters appointed during the period when the school was state-funded. While Howard Ballance, his successor, is remembered for facilitating the survival of RGS beyond 1976 as an independent grammar school, Holland, on the whole, has a much less tangible legacy. There is, however, one notable exception to this – the school swimming pool. While we cannot be certain when the idea of a school swimming pool was first conceived, it was at the Old Reigatian Association annual dinner in February 1957 that the Headmaster stated that, “We can see the possibility of a swimming pool in the school grounds. It is, of course, only a possibility, for the reason that it will cost a great deal of money and we do not yet know how this is to be raised.” Mr Holland once again referred to his ambition to have a school swimming pool at the Speech Day in July 1957. He said he had a good estimate of the cost of the project, and had been talking to parents, since it would be by appealing for donations that a significant amount of the costs would be covered.
Planning for the pool begins
A year later, the plan for the new pool was welladvanced. The proposed location was within the school gardens, to the west of the main buildings and above the Headmaster’s house. Promises of donations from parents and others amounted to over £3,000, with expectations of a further £1,000 in the pipeline. From the Headmaster’s Speech Day report in 1958, we know that the estimated cost was around £7,000 – a huge amount in the 1950s. Up to this point, the school had been allowed use
