YORK'S swimming pools often make the pages of The Press.

Recently, we reported that Yearsley Swimming Pool would close for four months for major work, leaving the city with only one municipal swimming pool - the Edmund Wilson baths in Dringhouses - through the summer.

And, in 2004, the closure of the Barbican pool was covered for months.

In previous years, though, pools made the news for happier reasons.

Yearsley open air baths were the city's first municipal baths, opening in 1860. The river bed was cemented for about 100 yards, near Yearsley Crescent.

Swimming was free and, though it was only for males, was very popular.

There was a changing hut and a part-time attendant, but the facilities closed in the 1930s.

By July 1924, there were open-air baths in Rowntree Park too. Admission charges were not introduced to these unheated baths until 1944.

There was a campaign to keep them when budget cuts forced the baths to close in 1980, followed by unsuccessful attempts to reopen them, but they were demolished in 1986.

The picture of baths foreman Frank Hardcastle was taken during a big clean-up of the pool. Nearly a quarter of a million gallons of water were pumped out and Mr Hardcastle cleaned and bleached the tiles.

Meanwhile, the picture of Yearsley Baths was taken in February 1976 and shows attendant Florence Golden as the baths are refilled.

Refilling was a 24-hour job and took 250,000 gallons of water and four days of heat to bring it to temperature.

Swimming facilities in York were good enough to rear several champions too, as the line-up of Scarcroft Boys Champion Swimming Team from around 1943 shows.