Two years after the opening of the theatre the Health & Holiday Resort Committee decided that their future policy should include the provision of an up-to-date and well-equipped swimming bath to replace the one lost in the creation of the Playhouse. The Playhouse, at that time, was still considered a temporary venue but the Committee never suggested that the swimming bath should be reinstated.
Such a proposal did not rear its head, quite unexpectedly, until July 1957, 17 years after its closure for the war effort. The council’s Playhouse Committee was asked to consider the recommendation of the Cheltenham Committee for Education that consideration should be given to bringing the bath back into use during the summer months for the benefit of school children.
The Playhouse Committee minutes show that its members believed that the swimming bath had been abandoned ‘some time before the last war because the cost of providing the necessary chlorination and filtration plant…was not justified’. They were, of course, mistaken as the bath was open for a short time in 1940 although concerns about chlorination had been raised prior to this and closure may well have been an inevitable result within a few years had war not been declared.
The council may not have wanted to run the theatre any longer but they didn’t want to see it close and the Cheltenham Theatre & Arts Club had expressed a keen interest to take over its management. It was a critical time for its survival and the Playhouse Committee felt that a decision on a lease for the Club should be made swiftly and not delayed to consider whether such a hybrid theatre/swimming model was feasible.
Matters were quickly resolved when the borough surveyor said that he estimated that the cost of making the necessary alterations to bring the bath back into use during the summer months would be in the region of an eye-watering £9,000 and that further considerable expenditure would be required to make it fit for use as a theatre during the winter months. Unsurprisingly, the idea went no further and swimming never returned to the building.