Elizabeth Seward
Elizabeth talks about the old swimming pool at Woking

We couldn't detect the Flash plugin

You need the Flash plugin to hear the audio version of this piece of oral history. You can download the Flash plugin here.

Woking used to have a fabulous swimming pool that was knocked down to make way for Toy-R-Us. I know they built an even better one. They built the Olympic Pool but, at the time when I first lived over this way, the swimming pool was quite lovely. It was a big pool, bigger than where I’d lived at home. The local pool that we’d had - much bigger pool. But it was the fact that it was raised up high with a glass wall all the way round and it was actually on a roundabout, or traffic certainly travelled round it. I’m not sure if it was actually a roundabout as such but the traffic went round it and it had this brown, smoked glass but you were raised up and, when you were in the pool or in the - you know, round the edge of the pool - you could look out and see people going past in their cars and there was just something really snug about it because you were in there and it was so lovely and warm and the glass was all steamy up and yet life was going on. Traffic was all travelling past outside. It sounds, probably, very silly but it just felt very – a very nice cosy place to be.

They needed the land to redevelop, to build The Peacock Centre and the Toys-R-Us that’s there now. But, for years and years, it was just left as a car park, a surface car park. It wasn’t even tarmacked, it was just a red shale car park for quite some years.

We used to come over in the evenings. A few girls - girls night out - we’d go and have a swim and then something to eat afterwards.