THE future of the Health Hydro in Milton Road has been thrown into question.

As the Swindon Advertiser revealed last week, the private sector organisation given the contract to run the community facility proposes to convert much of the interior into flats.

The picture is in marked and sad contrast to the one painted by a book stored in our archives.

It was issued in 1991 by the old Thamesdown Borough Council and Swindon Health Authority, and is a reprint of another book, A Century of Medical Service.

The original volume was commissioned to mark the 1947 centenary of the GWR Medical Fund, which was dissolved that year following the establishment of the NHS.

Its author was Bernard Darwin, grandson of Charles Darwin, the Victorian naturalist whose work became the cornerstone of evolutionary science.

The foreword to the reprint begins: “Milton Road Health Hydro, still known interchangeably by many as ‘the Baths’ or ‘the old Health Centre,’ will be 100 years young in 1992.

“What could be a more apt forerunner to the Centenary Celebrations planned than this reprint – the first – of a booklet published in 1947?”

There are many striking photographs in the book, including one of the earliest images of the building and one showing the large pool with its vaulted roof.

Also included are images of early GWR luminaries Daniel Gooch and FW Hawksworth, and of the old GWR Hospital in the Railway Village together with its operating theatre and dental surgery.

Darwin offers a vivid description of the Health Hydro, having been given a guided tour.

“First of all there are the Dispensary and the Baths. This is a large building measuring 160 x 219 feet, and even so it is truly remarkable how much has been put into it.

“Not, it be emphasized, forced into it, for there is no suggestion of crowding; everything is airy and pleasant, but every foot of space seemed to me to have been ingeniously used.”

Facilities listed by Darwin include Turkish, Russian baths – a type of sauna - and swimming baths, along with workshops, an ophthalmic department, a chiropody department and a physiotherapy room.

Remarks in the foreword of the reissue seem especially poignant in the light of current events:

“While the building is fondly remembered and still treasured for its role in social history, it is worth recording that it has and still does play a role on the National stage.

“It started out in 1892 as a pioneering venture well ahead of its time and was considered by Aneurin Bevan as part of the gestation of the NHS in the 1940s.

“Today it continues its pioneering role. It has evolved its services as a nationally unique Lifestyle Leisure Centre to cater for the fitness and whole health needs of the local population as we approach the 21st Century.”