The whole building was designed around the 75-ft by 33-ft swimming pool. It had a children and learners pool at one end and a deeper end with a huge set of diving boards at the other end. The pool could be seen from picture windows in on the ground floor and first floors and from a smaller window on the second floor.

In the environment of the Centre members began to take hold of new opportunities. For instance during the first three years after the second Centre opened, 157 married women, most of them middle-aged, had with no urging or persuasion- and very much to their own surprise - learned to swim.

Out of 160 children between the ages of 5 and 26 who joined the Centre in 1937, only forty were swimmers. A year later 128 of them could swim or were teaching themselves to do so.

Opportunities which though provided by the borough had been ignored were eagerly taken up in the Centre.

The learners pool