Tumbling Bay Bathing Place - Oxford Heritage Asset Register Nominations List

Location

Location of Tumbling Bay bathing area on Google Maps

What is it?

• a monument or site (an area of archaeological remains or a structure other than a building)
• a place (e.g. a street, park, garden or natural space) 

Why is it interesting?

• Historic interest – a well documented association with a person, event, episode of history, or local industry
• Architectural interest – an example of an architectural style, a building of particular use, a technique of building, or use of materials

In 1846, Parliament passed the Baths and Washhouses act, enabling local authorities to borrow money at favourable rates for the construction of baths, washhouses and, as the act states, ‘open bathing places’. While the fabric of Tumbling Bay has changed over the generations, it is fundamentally a rare remainder of the 1846 act in ‘open bathing place’ form. Following on from a smaller bathing place in St. Ebbe’s, Tumbling Bay became the second public bathing place to be provided by Oxford’s local authorities, when it was established in 1853. Following the redevelopment of the Oxpens area in the mid-twentieth century, which erased any trace of the St. Ebbe’s bathing place, Tumbling Bay is, at present, the oldest remaining public bathing place in the city. Initially set up to provide a safe and discreet site for men and boys to wash and swim (in an age before bathing costumes), Tumbling Bay also played host to a landmark moment in the history of Oxford’s women when, in 1892, the City Council gave women access to bathe there during certain hours. This was the first time women were officially permitted to bathe in the Thames in Oxford free of charge. Around 1900 and into the twentieth century, Tumbling Bay became a regular site of swimming lessons for local school children, as well as a wider site of leisure, for picnicking and sunbathing as well as paddling and swimming. The site was officially decommissioned in 1990, but has remained popular as a swimming and wider leisure area among local residents ever since, even in the absence of an official attendant, as the recent petition (on 38 Degrees website) comments.

The site’s history has been documented in greatest detail using a wide variety of sources in historian Malcolm Graham’s article, ‘Simple Pleasures; a history of Tumbling Bay bathing place, Oxford,’ published in Oxfordshire Local History, vol. 11 (Winter 2023). Tumbling Bay also featured – through photographs from newspapers and private collections, as well as through oral testimony – in the Lottery-funded exhibition at the Museum of Oxford, Dive In! A History of River Swimming in Oxford (April-September 2023), the exhibition catalogue of the same name (Museum of Oxford, 2023), and the exhibition podcast.

Why is it locally valued?

• Association: It connects us to people and events that shaped the identity or character of the area
• Illustration: It illustrates an aspect of the area’s past that makes an important contribution to its identity or character
• Evidence: It is an important resource for understanding and learning about the area’s history
• Aesthetics: It makes an important contribution to the positive look of the area either by design or fortuitously
• Communal: It is important to the identity, cohesion, spiritual life or memory of all or part of the community

Tumbling Bay has been part of local social life, leisure and physical life for over 170 years, substantially shaping not only the identity but the practical skills and safety of generations of local residents in providing a safe place to learn and practice swimming. As the Dive In! exhibition illustrated, Oxford has a rich history of bathing places, public, private and ‘wild’. Along with Long Bridges, Tumbling Bay is illustrative of this history – a rare example of a nineteenth century bathing place that remains not only largely intact but in regular use by local communities, while once-popular sites like Parson’s Pleasure, Dame’s Delight, The Rhea, St Ebbe’s bathing place and St Clement’s bathing place have either been abandoned or erased altogether in terms of their built remains. In an era when ‘wild swimming’ is highly popular and its benefits to mental health and wider wellbeing becoming increasingly well-studied and understood, Tumbling Bay provides evidence of the deeper history of this tradition, highlighting the fact that, far from being a passing fad, river swimming has a profoundly important place in Oxford’s social history and the history of public leisure/sanitary provision.

The appearance of Tumbling Bay is a key part of its value. Once the site of much corrugated metal and signage, the concrete banks and weir (dating to the 1950s at the latest) are the key remaining physical elements of the bathing place, and harmonise beautifully with the river, trees, reeds and long grasses. Tumbling Bay is, like Long Bridges, a kind of hybrid between an open river and a formalised pool, providing an idyll of calm for swimming and relaxing only ten minutes walk from the train station and the busy city centre. The many comments and memories posted on the petition (on 38 Degrees website) page to ‘Save Tumbling Bay’ are testament to the communal value of the site, its significance not only as a current leisure space but as a place of fond memories for multiple generations; as is the formation and ongoing activities of the Tumbling Bay Preservation Society (TBPS), who organised the petition and presented it to the council in March 2023.

What makes its local significance special?

• Age
• Rarity
• Integrity
• Group value
• Oxford’s identity
• Other

As outlined above, Tumbling Bay is not only over 170 years old, but also represents a rare remainder of the 1846 Baths and Washhouses act and a rare example, for Oxford and the Thames Nominate a Heritage Asset in general, of a remaining built Victorian river bathing place. There is an ongoing problem with the north bank of one of the pool areas, which is subsiding. This has been the focus of council and TBPS activity for more than two years and provides the impetus behind this application. Otherwise the upper and lower pool, the weir, steps, bridge and sluice are in good condition. In terms of other value, it is worth stressing in particular the value of Tumbling Bay as a site of working class heritage and of women’s heritage, as the first site where working Oxford women were permitted to bathe in the Thames and a site that has served local children and adults over several generations and remains strongly valued by local residents.