HISTORY OF THE CLUB

Halcyon Naturist Swimming Club was formed in 1975 when some members of the long-gone South Hants Sun Club decided that they wanted to swim au naturel all year round but the Sun Club only had an outdoor pool that was to cold to swim in during the winter months. After investigation, they were offered the private use of the council-owned Eastney Swimming Pool & met there every Wednesday evening until COVID lockdown stopped all such activities in Spring 2020. After lockdown, Portsmouth City Council decided that repairs required to re-open Eastney Swimming Pool were prohibitively expensive & permanently closed the pool, leaving Halcyon needing an alternative home, pending construction of a replacement facility. In Spring 2022, Halcyon accepted an offer of an interim venue with the assistance of Portsmouth City Council.

Eastney Swimming Pool has an interesting history, having been built around 1905 as part of the Royal Marines Barracks in Portsmouth. It is notable for its role in training the Cockleshell Heroes, that band of brave men who, in 1942, canoed 70 miles up the River Gironde to Bordeaux, sank one ship and severely damaged several others with limpet mines. The disruption to the Nazis was sufficient for Winston Churchill to claim that the action shortened the war by six months.

Another claim to fame is that Eastney Swimming Pool is where the very first games of Underwater Hockey, or Octopush as it is often known, were played in 1954. The sport was started with the aim of keeping members of Southsea Sub-Aqua Club from abandoning the new club during the winter months in which it was too cold to dive in the sea. The first octopush competition between clubs was a three-way tournament between teams from Southsea, Bournemouth and Brighton in early 1955. Southsea won then, and they are still highly ranked at a national level today.