Swimming fashions and compulsory costumes

Swimming costumes and swimming caps (Jenny Holloway). To view the transcript for this audio, click here.

Thelma Townsend and a friend at Dame's Delight. An example of women's swimming fashions in the 1930s. 

What you wore to swim in the river was decided by a number of factors, including gender, rules and personal preference.

Jenny recalls what she and her peers wore to swim in the river in the audio.

Kenneth and Gilbert Howes at Long Bridges. c. 1933.

At City Council bathing places, swimming costumes became compulsory for men in 1932. They remained optional at Parson's Pleasure until its closure sixty years later.

Parson's Pleasure kept alive a tradition of homosocial (all-male) bathing and sunbathing, and became a meeting place for gay men.