Community facilities
Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990. As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.
The village has two community centres. The Whiteway Centre, Whiteway Lane, was opened in April 1974. The other, Rottingdean Public Hall in Park Road, was built in 1935. The corporation’s Rottingdean Library opened in December 1929 at the Church of England School on the southern side of Nevill Road. In about 1948 it moved to a house in Marine Drive between Park Road and West Street, but in 1953 the corporation purchased The Grange on the eastern side of the Green and opened it as a branch library on 29 January 1954.
Rottingdean swimming-pool was opened by the mayor, Edward Denne, on 29 July 1935 in conjunction with the Undercliff Walk extension to Saltdean. A sea-water pool 100 feet by 35 feet, it had few facilities but occupied a wonderful location below the cliffs. In 1989 it was privately leased but damage in the storms of January and February 1990 have probably caused its permanent closure. On the eastern cliff top, behind the fence above the pool, lies the Hangman’s Stone, named after the sheep-stealer who, after falling asleep at this point, was strangled by the lead he had attached to his booty.
Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder.
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Rottingdean swimming pool – happy memories! My friends and I would be there every summer during the first half of the 1970s. I remember the changing cubicles around the back and taking everything with you to find a sunny bit of concrete to put your towel on and lie in the sun listening to the radio one roadshow. We would divebomb each other off the diving board and no-one worried about sunburn, we just enjoyed ourselves soaking up the sun. During the long hot summer of 1976 we would frequent the Olde Place at the weekends and sometimes end the night by climbing over the surrounding wall at the pool to all go skinny-dipping. One evening the police arrived and shone their torches over the wall to find a row of bare backsides; we had heard them coming and had lined up facing the wall to protect our modesty. Happy days indeed!
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