The St Mary’s pool has been a fixture of the campus for 80 years and now, for very vague reasons, it’s shutting down. The last day for the pool (and the staff who run it), is on 16 July 2018.
If you’re a regular at St Mary’s you’ll know how much this pool means to the people who work and study here. There are few other ways to clear your head after long hospital rounds or a session of disease modelling. What’s more, the facilities at South Ken are too far for us to access easily.
That’s why we’ve set up a petition to try and save our little pool. If you’d like to support us, you won’t even have to get your hands wet. Just sign our petition on Change.org and like our Facebook page. You can also join the mailing list here.
Lend us your voice and (hopefully) we’ll be keeping it splashy over here for generations to come.
4 comments for “Save the St Mary’s pool!”
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I’m so sorry to hear this! What is the reasoning for closing the pool? I’m sure a lot of staff do not know about it. I used it regularly when I had more time but know it is a highly valued facility. It would be worth getting somthing put out on the Source by communications so all staff can be informed and hopefully help to keep the pool open.
This is very sad. I was captain of swimming and water polo in 1967 to 1968. During my time at Mary’s Anne Cotterill and Pin Seah swam for Great Britain. I and John Fox played water polo for British Universities. Patrick Chesterman played water polo for England. Geoff Talbot and Roger Titley represented London University (as did John and myself) We all spent many happy hours in the pool and we were always the strongest Medical School at swimming and water polo.
Hi Robert, thank you for sharing this amazing story. I’m actually from Singapore too, just like Dr Pin Seah, and I grew up not far from his clinic in Bishan. Truly, the St Mary’s pool has seen many greats and we’re hoping that there will be more to come. Over the next few weeks, my classmates in the School of Public Health (now based at St Mary’s campus) will be swimming as many widths of the Channel we can to raise awareness about the pool’s impending closure. We’ll be making some announcements soon and I hope you can support us 🙂
Issac, happy to do anything I can. I have sent a polite email to all the members of the board at IC that I can locate (10 in all) asking if they could reconsider their decision and saying a bit about the history of the pool. I would like to be more forceful but in my experience this can be counterproductive. I am not necessarily anticipating any replies. I have also emailed many of my contemporaries for help. If it is purely a financial decision could the pool not be opened at set times for the general public to help support it. Bob Palmer.