Swimmers across Britain will greet the longest day by plunging into a pool tomorrow. Many will take that summer solstice dip amid the splendour of a restored public lido or municipal baths as the national appetite for preserving historic leisure facilities grows.
Last week, the Grade II*-listed Victoria Baths in Manchester, which has been closed since 1993, moved a stage nearer to opening for swimmers again. The city has just announced stage two of a lengthy restoration – with a planned commercial refurbishment of its lavish marble Turkish baths, designed by architect Henry Price and first enjoyed when the baths were completed in 1906.
“It is a very good time for pool restoration,” says Historic Pools of Britain campaigner, Gill Wright, a swimming teacher and tireless evangelist for the sport. “We are still an aquatic mammal, I believe. We came out of the water and lots of us can’t wait to get back in again.”
Progress in the rescue of the Victoria Baths is the sign of a national movement: a retro bathing boom that reflects a wide interest in the quality of the whole swimming experience.
For Wright, the tide began to turn when Britain’s architectural historians focused on the country’s threatened and neglected outdoor lidos. At the height of popularity in the 1930s, 169 lidos were built, but throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s many were earmarked for demolition. Only 31 remain. Lost gems include a large complex in Finchley, north London, which had a children’s paddling pool and a fountain.
The new lido movement, driven by a fresh impulse to swim in the open air, has notched up a series of successful rescues. Among the star sites are south London’s Brockwell Lido, for years threatened with closure, the lido in High Wycombe, shut down in 2010, and one in Charlton, which reopened after a £2m refurbishment in 2013. In Reading, Berkshire, the team behind the restoration of Bristol’s chic Grade II-listed open-air pool at Clifton are doing extensive work on the former King’s Meadow pool, built in 1902 for women and initially fed by Thames water. It has been closed for 42 years. On the south coast, Saltdean Lido, near Brighton, was visited by communities and local government secretary Greg Clark this month to herald its restoration by 2017. Six years ago the pool was due to be filled in.
In Penzance, the Jubilee Pool reopened last month following a £3m repair project after storm damage in 2014. The pool, built in 1935, was first reopened in 1994 after falling into disrepair.
Tim Mills, of Fusion Lifestyle, the company involved with the Victoria Baths restoration and lidos at Brockwell and High Wycombe, said he was feeding a general appetite. “Some of these pools appeal to those who want to swim outdoors and others to those who feel landmark buildings need to be kept,” he said. “But there is also a broader nostalgic message. People remember sunbathing, or just showing off by the pool, in their youth. It is about more than swimming.”
Lidos yet to be saved include one in Peckham, south London, which is the subject of a campaign backed by the actor James Norton. The future of the Rock Pool in County Down, Northern Ireland, is also still precarious, while Cleveland Pools, near Bath, awaits rescue. “Lidos still need help,” said Wright, “but in the last ten or 15 years there has been a real resurgence and this work has led the way for the restoration of public baths. Lidos are a bit easier to renovate because they have no roofs and don’t need the same standard of facilities: some are not heated and there is less of a commercial risk. With an indoor pool, you have to pay more attention to expectations of warm showers and private changing.”
Municipal baths were a health and sanitation solution and proliferated in Britain after the 1846 Baths and Wash House Act, passed in response to cholera epidemics. The facilities offered patrons private hot tubs for a small fee. “[Manchester’s] Victoria Baths represents the peak of that era. There were first-class baths with control of your heated water, and second class, without,” said Wright. There are 116 listed baths buildings in Britain. Most were built before 1936 and only 52 are operational or being refurbished. Among the saved are Bramley Baths in Leeds and Govanhill Baths in Glasgow, due to reopen in 2018 after a major refit starting this September. Birmingham’s Moseley Road Baths, an equally grand sister to Victoria Baths, is still fighting hard to keep going, aided this spring by a World Monuments Fund grant.
Closed since 1993, Victoria Baths’ big break came with the BBC2 series Restoration in 2003, when the building won a viewers’ poll and a £3m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, paying for initial work on the roof and one of the stained glass windows.
East London’s Haggerston Baths is hoping for similar luck. It is currently defunct, daubed with graffiti, and costs Hackney council £100,000 a year in security and maintenance while it considers 10 rival bids to develop the site. Also lined up in this poolside beauty contest is Ladywell Baths in Lewisham, south London. Last year the badly neglected site appeared in the Victorian Society’s top 10 of England and Wales’s most endangered buildings. Christopher Costelloe, director of the society, said then: “What was once a hub of the community deserves better than lying empty, half obscured by trees.”
In the north of England, Salford’s derelict Grade II-listed Greengate Baths, one of the earliest in existence, is also appealing for funds.
The two bibles for devotees are Ian Gordon’s book, Great Lengths, about indoor baths, and Liquid Assets, a study of lidos by Janet Smith. She charts their early appeal as a substitute holiday destination, through to the modern thirst for varied leisure pursuits.
“We lead very busy and hectic lives, and when you go to a lido it’s a very simple, relaxing space,” she said. For Wright, it does not matter how a pool is saved or who runs it. What counts is getting people in the water again. So this is not necessarily a story of rival restoration ideologies but rather about finding the right funding formula for each endangered site. “A growing trend is for the operation of pools, both indoor and outdoor, to transfer from local authorities to community and leisure trusts,” said Wright.
Some pools are being successfully run by volunteers or supported by the local users, such as Shap Swimming Pool in Cumbria and Ilkley Lido in West Yorkshire. Others are run as purely commercial venues.
When it comes to Victoria Baths, Wright is unwavering. Despite the commercial Turkish baths, the pool must be a municipal facility, accessible to all: “It was built for the people and funded by the people, so it will need to reopen on that basis. I certainly feel that, after 23 years of campaigning for it.” ”
This solstice, brave Yorkshire swimmers are invited to head to Ilkley Lido at 4.45am, and Londoners sensitive to low morning temperatures may wish that the lovingly restored London Fields Lido in Hackney, east London, had gone ahead with rumoured plans to install a retractable roof.
Happily, swimmers across Britain may not have to wait too long before they can all set off for the refurbished grandeur of a local Victorian baths, for a swim, a steam and a hot shower under an impressive, listed roof.
Cleaving a passage: leading vintage pools
London’s open-air all-stars Parliament Hill Lido, Hampstead Heath, and south of the river, Brockwell Lido and Tooting Bec Lido.
River water Chagford Swimming Pool, Dartmoor National Park, Devon: a solar heated, filtered novelty.
Salt water Droitwich Spa Lido, Briar Mill, Worcestershire, modernised, but dating from the 1930s.
Seaside pools Tinside Lido, Plymouth, art deco and voted one of the top 10 best outdoor pools in Europe; Lymington Sea Water Baths, Hampshire, with therapeutic roots, one of the oldest in the country; Jubilee Pool, Penzance, Cornwall saved by public campaign; Portishead Lido, Bristol also saved by locals; Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, sea water, but heated; Havre de Pas, Jersey, an old favourite with big plans.
Natural sources Bude Sea Pool, Cornwall, topped up twice a day by the Atlantic; Nantwich in Cheshire, a brine spring once used to treat rheumatism. Pells Pool, Lewes, East Sussex, the oldest freshwater pool in England, dating from the 1860s. Abereiddy’s Blue Lagoon, Pembrokeshire, Wales, filled by the sea.
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