KENTISH EXPRESS TIME CAPSULE

FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Our reporting of the project continued from the design phase into the construction. First the old 1974 buildings had to be taken down.

Work started in January 2005, and the then Ashford Town Swimming Club vicechairman Georgina Bates joined Cllr Jill Hutchinson and then-Stour Centre manager Emma Wallace to get things started.

Visits in 2006 revealed the progress which was made, and by September 2006, the main outline of the wave design had taken shape.

Then in July 2007, the KE got a sneak preview of the completed centre before it opened its doors to the public.

There was plenty of anticipation for the new centre opening, and the then-Mayor of Ashford Cllr Rita Hawes was among the first to explore the facilities.

Our photographer even got a snap of the mayor as she dared to take on the new flume in the leisure pool area.

Pictures also showed the big queues of excited people waiting to get inside the building on September 14, 2007.

Among the first through the door were Tayley Penfold and Olli Jupp who posed alongside Stour Centre staff Alan Woodcock and Claire Powell, pictured right.

And we also reported on how, at long last, Ashford got a leisure pool which kids could enjoy, along with a learner pool and a 25-metre pool.

‘Those of us who grew up in Ashford will remember swimming lessons in the old learner pool and 25-metre pool. It was a windowless building bathed in orange floodlights, and everything about it seemed beige’

Stour Centre’s pool in 2002

Mayor Derek Madgett with Duncan Goodhew at Stour Centre celebrations in 1988

The Express got a sneak preview in July 2007

Mayor Rita Hawes about to take the plunge

First customers through the doors

The Stour Centre in Ashford, before the start of rebuilding work, along with an artist’s impression (inset) of the proposed new look. The centre re-opened in 2007.