On Friday 6 March 2026, we unveiled our 208th blue plaque for international champion swimmer, Doris Storey. In this article, Doris’s relative and Leeds Civic Trust member tells us about Doris and York Road Baths.
The York Road Baths had a decidedly Victorian aspect, but they were opened in 1904. The surrounding area of back-to-backs, covering much of Burmantofts and Richmond Hill, was impoverished but home to a tight-knit community, where whole extended families would live along the same street. They’d also intermarry within the same area. I know this because my father, my mother and their families all came from there.
As well as the 25 yard swimming pool, there was a Russian Bath and slipper baths – of course, most people didn’t have a bath at home. Adjoining the Public Baths was a Public Library, anticipating today’s community hubs. The buildings are now occupied by The Gym Group. The Baths became the centre of a local swimming culture and home to the East Leeds Ladies Swimming Club.
Doris Storey was born in 1919 and grew up in her father’s grocery store on the corner of Greyhound Place and Ironstone Street, just 150 yards from the entrance to the Baths. She showed great swimming talent and in 1936 at the age of 16, while already working full time at Montague Burton’s, represented Britain in breast stroke at the Berlin Olympics. She was favoured for a medal but came 5th after injuring her wrist just before the final. Then Doris took the 6-week sea voyage with all the British team to the Empire Games in Sydney in 1938. She won gold medals in breast stroke and medley relay and on returning to Leeds got a rapturous reception. She later broke the world record for 200 yards breast stroke.
During and after her competitive career, Doris Storey took full part in the swimming tradition at York Road. In the 1930s she appeared with the York Road Mermaids display team, forerunners of modern synchronised swimming. She always promoted her sport, running a swimming club at the Baths and teaching countless people of all ages how to swim.
Doris married Norman Quarmby and after the War they ran Quarmby’s fish & chip shop on East Park Drive near East End Park. I’m related because her elder sister married one of my uncles in Burmantofts in the 1930s. When I was growing up, she was just “Aunty Doris” and you couldn’t imagine anyone kinder or more modest. You’d never have known that she was once the most celebrated person in Leeds. Of course, to accomplish what she did, she must have had inner determination. That showed on one of her last competitive appearances, when she came out of retirement to deliver a breast stroke relay leg that powered the East Leeds Ladies Swimming Club to the city championship trophy.
I have childhood memories of visiting Storey’s grocery shop (it lasted until slum clearance in 1953), Quarmby’s fish & chips, and of course the York Road Baths. Many older East Leeds residents will recall that after your swim you could buy a drink of piping hot Bovril, a pack of salted biscuits or a Wagon Wheel from the lady at the turnstile.
The Civic Trust has now honoured Doris with a Blue Plaque and many family members, including her two grandsons and her two nieces (my cousins), attended the unveiling in March (pictures in the April Outlook). A high point for all of us was to accept The Gym Group’s invitation, stand again in the old entrance to the Baths, and see the marvellous Burmantofts tiling and rather quirky owl mosaic – I never appreciated those in the 1950s!
