Sheffield retro: A nostalgic look back and memories of iconic Glossop Road swimming baths

It may be a place people go to eat, now.

But back in the 1980s, Glossop Road was home to one of Sheffield's best known swimming baths.

It was later converted to become first a pub, and then a restaurant.

But for me, like most of my generation growing up in the city in the 70s and 80s, that building meant trips to the Victorian Glossop Road baths every week during a chunk of childhood, as the venue of swimming lessons in that era.

For us as children, it was a straightforward journey. Queueing on the school grounds, we would file onto a double decker, brown and cream coloured, South Yorkshire Transport bus - the same vehicle as you would get on if you were taking one of the public service routes, for the trip from our estate into town.

Stopping off on one of the side roads next to the baths, we'd troop off the bus again and into the old fashioned changing rooms. Once changed, it was time to get into another queue.

The changing rooms led to a T-junction, joining into a white corridor, tiled in the way only swimming pools are, with those bumps in the tiles to provide grip on wet floors. At either end of that gently-sloping corridor was a 25m pool, the Cavendish Pool at one end, the Victoria Pool at the other, named after the side streets on either side of the building.

I had already learned to swim, so headed off with the more 'experienced' group, I think up the gentle slope, to one of those pools. Going down the slope took you to the other pool.

Arriving there, even in the early 1980s, it seemed like an old pool. This was an era in which Sheaf Valley baths had been built not far from Pond Street bus garage. At Sheaf Valley, there were sophisticated diving boards, and the water went all the way to the top of the pool. At Glossop Road, it lapped against the sides at least a foot below to top of the wall of the pool. Getting out was a challenge unless you used the ladders at either end.

And so, arriving at the pool, you found yourself under the authority of the swimming instructor. And ours was scary. There was no gentle instruction. Instructions felt like they were being given in an intimidating way. With hindsight, you can understand why that may be, as a bunch of youngsters around water probably leaves no room for messing about in a potentially dangerous environment.

But it did rather put people off swimming, and certainly made me feel that swimming lessons were something to dread rather than enjoy.

Eventually we jumped into the pool - wearing various layers of clothing. Lessons were designed to move us towards our bronze, silver and gold personal survival badges, with a chunk of that involving swimming in your pyjamas.

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So after swimming a number of lengths in the weight of your clothes, you would then take most of them off, leaving just your swimming costume, and swim more lengths, although for the higher awards, you would also have to tie knots in your pyjama trousers' legs, and blow them up into a sort of life jacket, and use that to keep yourself afloat for a period.

By the end of this, tired out, you would traipse back onto the bus for the journey back to school, while at least one of the other pupils would demonstrate how swimming lessons had given them the life skill of moulding their wet hair into something resembling Human League singer Phil Oakey's Don't You Want Me Baby-era haircut.

So was it worth it? It certainly wasn't much fun. But I still have the badges, I can swim, and I'll never forget those Human League haircuts.