I miss St. Augustines Swimming Pool every time I go to the deep end of Spar to buy a can of beans or a pork pie.

Those strange “no bombing, no petting” signs, the frigid water, the stinging eyes, and the cheap hot cocoa.

For many Norwich and Norfolk residents who spent at least some of their childhoods splashing around here, the

high arched windows filled with bluey light at night were a vastly reversible, temporally dislocated improvement on

the Spar shop, and the takeaways that finally killed what was left of St Augustine’s Street’s trade. This post-war

development may not be the most attractive building by our oddly skewed modern standards, but it is also not ugly

and beautiful by association.

Designed by David Percival, it opened in 1961. It was exactly what a swimming pool ought to be—a public pool that

was either free or inexpensive to use for swimming. Later on, it also included a cheap gym. destroyed in the early

2000s. We watched it being disassembled, and I was a little disappointed that I had never used the high diving board

since I’m not good at heights.

On the first night of the Baedeker Raids on April 27 and 28, 1942, it was St. Augustines School, this time facing St.

Augustines Gate, 500kg, Bang. Not in use. Before it was used for anything else, it served as a rest centre. Strangely,

in the original photo, there is a surface shelter directly to the right of the route. I travel through it almost daily and

was unaware of its existence. Here is a closer look at the school’s back.

 

From David Percival’s Grandson Richard

I decided to research structures my grandpa David had created as a city architect while I was working in an office in

New York. It was heartbreaking to see another building gone, such as his library, which burned down. Those soaring

windows are very lovely, but their modernist concrete style has fallen out of favour and the magnitude of the post-

war building restoration, which resulted in limited finances, did not improve quality. However, since it depicts the

nation’s position in the middle of the 20th century, I believe that part of it should eventually be saved as well.. He

was also responsible for a lot of sympathetic restoration work on traditional Norwich structures such as the Castle

and Elm Hill. I was lucky enough to live with him in Norwich for 6 months in 1984 when I was 5 at his home in the

Cathedral Close and still have amazing memories of running to Pulls Ferry and the Cow Tower!

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