Bobbing about in the shallow end of the first-class pool at Manchester’s Victoria Baths, Susan Menzies was awash with nostalgia. “It’s very emotional. I’m going back to my youth here. I’m not swimming around as a 60-odd-year-old – I feel 15 again,” she said, turning around for one last length of breaststroke as light streamed in from the vaulted glass roof.

Nearby, a couple dressed in knee-length Victorian costumes and straw hats tossed a beach ball around, while two teenage girls floated on hot pink rubber rings fashioned into flamingos. On the side, bathers dried off in wooden cabins behind striped curtains before being handed what, for most, was their first swimming certificate for many decades.

A swimmer changes at the Grade II-listed building. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

They were among 177 lucky swimmers to enjoy the first public session at Victoria Baths since it closed in 1993. The one-off event was such a hot ticket that it sold out in 20 minutes, faster than Glastonbury, as campaigners step up attempts to raise £30m to reopen the swimming complex labelled Manchester’s water palace when it opened in 1906.

Just one of the three pools had been filled for the occasion. The first-class pool was originally reserved for the wealthiest Mancunian gents, who were given the cleanest water in return for their sixpence entrance fee. Their leftovers filtered into the second-class male pool next door and then finally to the female baths.

Menzies, a 62-year-old phlebotomist who grew up around the corner in Chorlton-on-Medlock, not only swam regularly at Victoria Baths, but bathed there too. Once a week she would be packed off by her parents to the “slipper baths” they had on the balcony above the second-class men’s pool. “We didn’t have a bath at home so we’d come here for one on the weekend. It was lovely. The baths were massive, porcelain, really deep. They gave you free soap and a cup of tea. We’d come on our own when we were only 10. When we were a bit older we started going to the Turkish baths.”

Campaigners have submitted a £3.5m bid to the Heritage Lottery to restore the baths as a spa. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Most of the slipper baths are now gone but plans are under way to reopen the Turkish baths as the next phase of the long-running restoration project. Campaigners have submitted a £3.5m bid to the Heritage Lottery to restore the baths as a spa, with a brand new health suite, which they hope could open within five years. Restoring the whole building and reopening the gala pool properly would cost £30m, according to Gill Wright, Victoria Baths’ development manager: “But the biggest hurdle is proving its viability, that we can keep it going by ourselves.”

Manchester city council, which has seen its budget cut by £271m since 2010, has refused to fund the restoration. “It’s shortsighted,” said George Merryweather, a catering porter, who swam regularly at Victoria Baths from the age of six. “I’m going to write to Andy Burnham, the new mayor of Greater Manchester, and tell him. I know there are a lot of challenges, funding the NHS and everything, but he should be saving recreational facilities as well, not leaving it all to the private sector. We need swimming pools. We were here almost every night. The kids now are all in their bedrooms on their PlayStations.”

Ann Signol, who refused to give her age, said swimming in Victoria Baths again was “magic, absolutely magic”. She said she was just hours old when her mother brought her “straight from the clinic” to the baths for an unofficial baptism. She was always going to be a water baby. Her aunt, Sunny Lowry, had been one of the first women to swim the Channel, back in 1933, when she was 22 – a feat she trained for by eating 45 eggs a week. Another aunt, Betty, was a champion high diver.

The Victoria Baths in Manchester, originally opened in 1906. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

It had been almost 60 years since Roy Hyde and Jim Latham had raced each other at Victoria Baths. On Sunday, they bumped into each other again. Latham was a water polo player – a sport considered by local girls to attract the dishiest boys – and trained at the baths every day, before becoming a lifeguard. Just looking at the pool made him tired, he said. “It was blood, sweat and tears. It wasn’t fun, you know. Sunday morning, eight until 12. You’d stop for a breath and the coaches would shout ‘get moving, Latham!’ I’d go home absolutely shattered.”

Hyde, 73, had only happy memories: “We had a cracking team, we did.”

Brian Osbiston, 69, used to swim there as a boy – sometimes nude. “In the late 50s, early 60s, you were allowed to swim in the second-class male pool even if you didn’t have any trunks,” he said. “You couldn’t do it now. They wouldn’t entertain it at all.”

He was optimistic that before long the baths would reopen properly. “Look at all the people here today,” he said. “These baths are part of our heritage and people want them to be saved.”