Hazel Chapman — Newquay wartime memoir

Hazel Chapman was a Bergman Österberg student whose later memoir records the everyday experience of training in wartime Newquay, including Baker’s Folly pool.

Hazel Chapman began at the Bergman Österberg Physical Training College in September 1944, while it was based in Newquay. Her account, published in the Union’s 2016 magazine and signed with her 1947 leaving year, recalls a college spread between four hotels, with Fistral Bay Hotel as its main centre.

Her memoir brings practical student life into view: a cramped converted garage for gymnastics, journeys on foot or bicycle and improvised swimming venues. At Baker’s Folly she remembered competitions and lifesaving examinations in a pool that took only four or five strokes to cross.

This is participant testimony written later, with references to her diaries, rather than a reproduced wartime diary. The 2021 swimming booklet quotes her account, so the two publications should not be counted as separate witnesses to her experiences.