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Building a Swimming Pool (continued)

Finding materials

The search for materials began. The general principles were to make the School's needs known to parents and friends as widely as possible, to look no gift horse in the mouth, to buy second hand where possible, but never to attempt economy at the expense of quality. The first step was the duplication of a list to be sent to all possible wellwishers of the scheme, of materials, tools and equipment which would be required. It was much too long to be quoted in full here; the list of thirty materials ranged from sand and cement in enormous quantities to 6 cwt. of nails, from ready-mix concrete to builders' string, from paving stones to l˝ gross of screws; the forty items in the list of building equipment included one bulldozer and 100 scaffold boards, one carpenter's square and 220 railway sleepers for track making, pumps, wheelbarrows, shovels, hammers, sawing horses and so on.

The response to this appeal was rapid and enormously encouraging. We were lent a bench and a pipe bender for bending reinforced steel; one parent lent a number of shovels, another made the splendid gift of 3,500 bricks. Others did valuable work in seeking out secondhand building material. One enabled the school to buy 220 railway sleepers, weighing 16 tons, to form a track to the site that would stand up to hard usage by heavy lorries, and also made a gift of timber bought from a closed-down railway line in Hampshire. Other offers of loan included a 4-ton lorry, a cement mixer and a tractor; gifts included paving, 500 sheets of Fablon plastic, piping and cement. Through the vigilance of a school parent, three second-hand filtration tanks were bought for the remarkably low price of Ł45 each (they might each have cost Ł150 new), and an automatic burner was acquired from a glove factory for Ł50.

One problem to be faced was that of a suitable "water bar" to be inserted at all joints in the concrete; the Engineer decided to use Poly Vinyl Chloride instead of the customary copper or steel, thus saving something like Ł200. An old pupil of the School who was Pit Manager of a Yorkshire Colliery offered to supply old Coal Board conveyor belting, which could be sliced into 6 in. strips, at a cost of 12/- per cwt., and a sample was sent to undergo tests at Cambridge. It proved thoroughly satisfactory, and it was joined with Bostick sealing compound.

Brick passing, Autumn 1961 Brick passing, Autumn 1961.

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