A large part of Eastbourne’s charm is that it doesn’t trouble itself with any more of the 21st century that it absolutely has to.
So there is an airy new extension to the shopping centre and pale-brick pavement and road combo, but still plenty of very English cafes serving stuff with beans and B&Bs which actually put Vacancy / No Vacancy signs in the window.
But there is a particular slice of the 1970s I discovered, having recently moved to the Sunshine Coast.
Keen to get back to swimming, I sashayed into the Sovereign Centre, swinging my new keyring Resident Card in one hand, goggles in the other. I was pleased not to have to turn up ‘swim ready’ and queue up, waiting to be marched in on a pre-booked slot as was the case in Mid Sussex.
It’s free and easy here – turn up, pay, swim. Lovely.
The ‘gala pool’ for swimming lengths is calm and mercifully distant from the pounding music of the ‘fun pool’. Shame there are either misted windows or a large section of brick wall obscuring the beach, but no-one can hear you complain under water.
Before this, I had to journey through the ‘Female Changing’. I have a faint memory from distant childhood of those strange tiled not-quite-cubicles that people stood in (past tense), head and shoulders poking out, in order to get changed. A bit like a concrete sheep pen for an animal.
Correction: people stand in (present tense) them still in Eastbourne. They are still there in the 1970s-built Sovereign Centre and I was forced to use one as the very limited number of proper cubicles were taken.
A tall young woman was using one, the tiled wall coming up to under her rib cage. And a short elderly lady was right next to me, easy to peer down at should I have been so rude.
There’s a real ‘Carry On…’ film vibe about them. One expected the ghost of Barbara Windsor to be wriggling around in one, giggling, and trying to squeeze into a tiny polka dot bikini while any passer-by could see most of her acting credentials.
So, the array of facilities for ‘Female Changing’ comprises: five nipple-grazing sheep pens, four ‘proper’ cubicles, four open showers VERY close together, three toilets, one family cubicle – but, sadly, no partridge in a pear tree. Council finances wouldn’t stretch that far.
And of the four cubicles, two had swimming stuff left in them by selfish and extraordinarily tight-fisted swimmers unwilling to pay 20p (non-refundable) to use a locker.
Even if we make allowances for 1970s design, the room seems to have been put together by someone who didn’t think too many women should be allowed to swim at once and those who did could jolly well look sharp about it.
A story in the Eastbourne Herald in November 2016 tells us that there were plans for a new centre to be built in the car park. When finished, the old ‘Carry On…’ set, sorry, Sovereign Centre, would be demolished.
In classic local newspaper speak, it said that building work was “set to get underway [sic] in May 2017”.
Councillor David Tutt, leader of Eastbourne Borough Council, said at the time: “The Sovereign Centre is looking tired and it needs to be refreshed.”
The borough council website still states that a new £24 million centre was going to open in “late 2019”.
In September 2018, the local democracy reporter wrote a story “work on the new replacement leisure centre could begin in July 2019 with construction completed in early 2021”.
Five years after work should allegedly have started, we’ve suffered a pandemic, Coun Tutt is still council leader, the Sovereign Centre is looking absolutely exhausted and women swimmers are still ducking behind 1970s tiled pens.
:: When asked why no building work started in 2018 / 2019, a spokeswoman for Eastbourne Borough Council said: “There was a huge amount of the usual preparatory work undertaken – architects, designers, surveyors, etc – but the pandemic arrived and the focus changed.
“This project is part of a widescale review taking place due to financial pressures post-pandemic.”
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I really liked reading the description of the swimming baths.. It reminded me of where we used to meet in Putney. The description is vivid, full of humour, but at least Eastbourne isn’t plagued by cucarachas!!
Would be interesting to find out if the budget of £ 24 million has been ” redirected” to other more urgent matters… after the pandemic.
Enjoy your swimming!