I used to love the place. And the Woodpecker Cafe, and the walk home.
6am Saturday morning, stay as long as you like. My body was waterlogged by the time I got out!
Now them was proper baths!

i was driving along York Road today, our lass was laughing at the curry coloured MARCO POLO restaraunt opposite the Essoldo, and the Woodpecker Cafe came into the conversation as did the Yorkshire Lassie cafe.
like your self Monty i used to pedal up to the baths both Saturday and Sunday mornings for the early session. then into the woodpecker for a hot pork pie and a cup of oxo listening to Billy fury on the juke box. nostalgia wasted on the kids of today, they must be deprived of times like that what have they to look back on.

a couple of things spring to mind!

Salt water, Mrs Sands, elish pork pies, 2p on the bus or walk over steelies bridge !!

The Mill House baths was aq huge event the day it opened.





YOUNG GIRL..................... get outta my mnid.

Couldn't believe it when I went past the site of Seaton Baths and they'd demolished them. I've come out of there even more wrinkley than I am now. And the Wagon Wheels in the Woodpecker Cafe were at least three times the size they are now.

Didn't like looking down the cracks in the Steelworks bridge like.

funny that, we live in the house that the manager of Seaton Baths, Mr Westmoreland used to own.
I remember nicking off school one morning on baths day and making the HUGE mistake of walking down Church Street as the bus carrying my class and teacher back to school, drove past, they all waved. ...the worst part was waiting to go back the next day and going all the way through assembly till the names of all those with an 'appointment' with the headmaster 'Boss' Howard, were read out .... .... who diligently listened to my excuse, ..... then gave me four of the strap.

Didn't like looking down the cracks in the Steelworks bridge like.[/quote]

The Steelworks bridge was 'ellish. I use to cross it coming back from the baths just for the craic - I didn't even live in that part of the town!
That and the Steetley chimney are/were monuments to Hartlepool's true past. Who gives a fook about Nelson's column or the Windsor Long Walk. Those were OUR landmarks.

And ... it wasn't Billy Fury comin' on strong it was Brenda Lee.

The Mill House baths are modern and pucker and everything else and yes we've moved on, but Seaton baths were a day out. That was one of the best periods of my life, and believe me there have been some bloody good ones!

Oh and Gremms it's the Regal not the Essoldo!

but i am on about when it was released not the re release
ha ha , but do you still have the threepenny bits to put into it i am halfway to paradise now

I have a permanent reminder of Seaton baths- big scar on back of head. I was stood on a towel when the lad I'd gone with(name hidden to protect the guilty) did the pull the towel trick. I landed back of head first on the old wooden bench. Got home very late with lots of stitches and a huge head bandage.

"The Steelworks bridge was 'ellish. I use to cross it coming back from the baths just for the craic - I didn't even live in that part of the town!"

When a steam train went past me and my mates used to pretend we were Charlie Chan.
I'm sure the steam was that thick you couldn't see three feet in front of you.
And me mam wasn't too chuffed at me coming home stinking of coal smoke.

Weren't the pies from the green hut shop just outside the baths?

The steelworks bridge, I used to hurry across there as a littleun, used to pap myself at the gaps. I still remember that freezing walk home in the winter.

before my uncle died one easter my folks went away and I stayed with him he took me all over the town telling me tails of when he was a nipper, do any of the "older gents" remember the outdoor swimming pool near the fish sands,apartantley he said it was filled in by sea water (not sure if he was making it up like) I remember my uncle showing me the brackets on the walls were changing rooms used to be. Also swimming from headland to "west" he did mention a ferry or boat used to carry people accross is this right?

Yes on all counts!

The swimming pool was destroyed in the violent storms of '55, which was a little bit before my swimming coming-of-age. Prolly not before gremms's like.

in that week holiday I think I learnt more about the town I ever did. went to the old meuseum of hartlepool and he told me a story about this lad Berty Dick who got blew up on a land mine on the beach (as my uncle and mate and all kids used to go on it to get their footballs they kicked over) and they held an exhibition in town hall telling all kids not to go on the beach.

Enlightened me about the history of the town and couldnt imagine stuff like that in my childhood

Seaton Baths was the weekly swimming venue for us Tech Boys. (Grayfields for games)

Sometimes we had to swim in the sea. Freezin cold and awash with chicken feet and feathers from the Buxted chicken factory.

I've been across between what I suppose was the north end of Middleton to the Headland on the ferry with our owld many years ago. All it was was a fella with a pair of oars and a rowing boat.

Oars I said.

Just had a look on google earth and would ya believe it it used to go just from the end of Ferry Road.

that's the entrance to the deep water berth at Victoria docks now!!
Not a good idea for a bloke rowing across in front of the shipping lanes!!!

You can see that the steps on the Headland side are still there but bricked off at the top of the Town Wall.

At that time there was still the prop yard with the timber stacked up on the other side of the fence along Commercial Road in Central Estate so there must have been a fair amount of shipping even then with all the timber boats coming in from Russia.

the HSE will have kerboshed it then!!!
plus the fact so many people now have cars, and Middleton area has only just been repopulated recently near the Smallcrafts

Until the 80's, there was public access across the deep water berth and over the lock gates where the other swing bridge used to be and the road led to Middleton. Anyone remember the cafe near the deep water berth swingbridge a funny triangular shape where the roads split, we always went on our bikes as kids.

remember that cafe very well i served my apprenticeship at the port authority as a maintenance fitter and actually used to maintain the chipping machine in there and at the other canteen at middleton road.
scared me shitless going in with all them big hairy arsed dockers

Well my dear old dad was a foreman down the DWB and he took me down there plenty of times so hairy arsed dockers hold no mysteries for me!

sorry Mr Monty it was 53 when the bathing pool went down
if i could get image shack to work i would post some pics of the opening of the pool in 1923 and the damage to the Heugh
also the ferry steps. there was actually two ferry services one run by the fisherman and one by the corporation and both had their own steps to access the boats
on bad weather days they used to cover each other for safety sake.

Brenda Lee music was for tarts

Me sister taught me to swim in Seaton Baths on our Sunday morning visits down there. The place used to be sneided every week. She used to stick me on the wall, clinging to the drainage channel and then back away two steps and say 'come on then......,' and while I was furiously doggy paddling with me eyes shut, she'd back away until one day I made it right across the pool and she buggered off with the lads in the deep end.

But aye, a picnic pie and a cup of hot orange were the weekly treats.

Along with verrucas and athletes foot....

Well yes, you were there weren't you. I was a bit young to bother with dates at the time.

very interesting,best thread on here yet find the millhouse baths are full ov right wierd mushes,mostly the fellas who work their, skinhead springs to mind

Thanks Mr Katcha, great pics of old West H'pool.

Ey, sorry our kid when I took you down the Burn Valley swings and put you on the rocking horse and rocked it too fast thereby breaking your nose when it came into contact with the cast iron horsehead. I understand it's too late to sue.

West Hartlepool 1 Hartlepool 2

You and David McKeiver I seem to remember.......

I sued the horse instead.......

make it 2-2 then

Is it the Gray Art Gallery. I don't remember the drive being like that.

The white house as it is now former St Francis School ? or brinky?

I know I might seem a bit thick but i am oweing this comment to the fact at only being 26, I have never seen a pic of the bath at west hartlepool is this the baths that used to be on the seaton front were Hornseys bar grill place is now.

It is Seaton Baths, although I don't remember it as being quite as ornate a building as that picture shows.

Age has nowt to do with it.......

If you stand with your back to the Woodpecker Cafe (get yourself a Wagonwheel while you're there, they're bigger from there) Seaton Baths is 50 yds on your right on the opposite side of the road.

Hope this helps.

I understand there was a lot of those 'round the back' experiences in those catholic schools.

That picture was taken in the late 1930s. It underwent a major revamp by the time you and I (and yes, even Gremmlin) ever used it. The changing rooms were quite a bit wider than that and the facade was rebuilt.
It actually looked quite modern ... for its time.

A couple more scenes you young'uns might not have had a chance to see.

This one's before the shopping centre and civic centre existed. Binns (Wilko's) is just out of the picture on the left and the building behind the "Warmer morial" as I used to think it was called is the old TA centre.

And a bit of Seaton fewer people went to. I seem to remember there were some showmen's caravans away on the left. Dodgy characters.

Pardon the ignorance, but the war memorial picture, is that taken from where the Civic Centre now stands cos it looks for all the world as though that building in the background is on the site of the current Civic Centre?

looking at the war memorial i would say its taken from the grand hotel

Ah-ha (not the shitty '80s pop group like) that gives me my bearing better and makes a bit more sense!

no because steetley chimney is in the background so deffo taken from the shoppy site

that could be the brewery,also the church tower could be that one in park road next door to the education offices

st john's presbyterian church