Memories of Sunderland: Farewell Farringdon School, and its old Swimming Pool

At the beginning of this week, Sunderland City Council finally approved plans to rebuild Farringdon Community Academy, or as formerly known “Farringdon Community Sports College“. The plans will see a number of new buildings constructed on the school’s western field, bringing an end to a facility which was first built in 1956.

While most can agree that the school was aging and badly in need of being rebuilt, it is nonetheless sad for many as with the demolition of the old buildings goes many memories too. However, if there’s one thing that people might be happy about, it will probably be the demolition of the old swimming pool, which is to be built anew.

Farringdon school’s swimming pool has long been a subject of notoriety, rumour and even disgust. Although it was subject to several refurbishments, it was vastly outdated and beneath the standards of what you would expect of a public facility. This made many students detest it, especially its communal changing facilities.

In fact, the swimming pool was hated so much that it become a frequent subject of complaints by parents, who believed it was dirty. As an excerpt on the school’s website reads: “It has come to my attention that a post on social media has caused concern amongst a number of parents in the community regarding the condition of the Academy’s swimming pool facility.”

The statement went on to say that “To enable us to keep the pool running we are required to carry out tests 3 times per day to ensure the pool is meeting the high safety standards set by the City of Sunderland Public Health Authority who also visit monthly to check and test the quality of water. In addition to this, the pool area is cleaned daily by our site cleaner.”

Needless to say, the old pool won’t be missed, and hopefully its successor is a lot nicer!