Water in the Valleys: The Lost Lidos of Wales

On a warm day in the 1930s, a mining town in the South Wales Valleys could sound like a seaside resort. Children shrieked at the shallow end, a turnstile clicked, and the smell of wet concrete and chlorine drifted over the terraces. Few of those pools remain. Where water once glittered there are now car parks, grassed-over hollows and a handful of faint outlines seen from the air.

This is the story of the open-air pools that Wales built, loved and largely lost.

Pools Built by Hand

Lidos spread across Britain in the 1930s, when swimming had become a fashionable pastime and a recognised way to stay healthy. We tend to picture them on the coast, but many Welsh examples stood well inland, in the industrial communities of the South Wales Coalfield.

Public leisure facilities had been growing in these valleys since the years before the Great War, and they relied heavily on voluntary effort. In the 1920s and 1930s, support from bodies such as the Miners' Welfare Fund and the Special Areas Commission helped volunteers build open-air baths in places including Abertillery, Aberdare, Aberavon, Abersychan, Pontnewynydd and Swansea. Many were put up by men who were out of work during the Depression.

Pontypridd: The Lido That Came Back

The best-known survivor tells the story most clearly. Pontypridd Lido, in Ynysangharad Park, opened in 1927 in a style that brought a hint of the Mediterranean to the Valleys. It was paid for through the Miners' Welfare Fund, with local miners giving part of their wages to a communal pot. Families then swam in the pool their money had built, and the young Tom Jones is among those said to have been regular visitors.

The Grade II listed lido closed in 1991. It reopened in September 2015 after a restoration costing £6.3 million, and its success has encouraged groups elsewhere to ask whether their own lost pools might return.

Cold Knap and the Bristol Channel Giant

On the coast at Barry, the lido at Cold Knap was a very different kind of place. Built by volunteers and opened in the 1920s, it stood on the Bristol Channel and was the largest open-air pool in Wales, and among the largest in Britain. Visitors kept coming into the 1980s, and in the 1970s the pool and its surroundings were crowded with bathers paying a 5p entry fee.

The pool shut in the mid-1980s and was left to decay for many years. Local people supported reopening it, but it was gradually pulled down and finally dismantled altogether. Community groups have since campaigned for a new lido on the site, inspired by events at Pontypridd.

Council Baths and Community Projects

Abergavenny's Bailey Park Pool

Abergavenny Borough Council built and ran the pool at Bailey Park, which opened in 1938. It had a large adult bath, a smaller square one for children, a paddling pool and a row of changing boxes around the edge. There was a tuck shop too, and children queued at the turnstile with a few spare pennies for sweets. The baths closed in 1996, stood empty for a decade, and were demolished and filled in in 2006. An aerial survey later picked out the pool's outline in the ground, and the Abergavenny Lido Group has campaigned to bring the facility back.

Hendy, near Llanelli

Volunteer miners built the lido at Hendy, which opened in the early 1930s and lasted about 70 years before closing in 2002. Restoring it was estimated at close to £500,000. Residents raised funds for years, but in 2008 the campaign committee voted to end the effort.

Brynmawr

In the summer of 1931, volunteers began work on an open-air pool on an old rubbish tip at Brynmawr. The work was done in stages by local unemployed men alongside international volunteers from countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and the United States. It is regarded as an outstanding example of communal working, and as the first project of its kind in the UK.

Reading the Gaps

The pattern in these stories is familiar. A pool built in a burst of local enthusiasm becomes expensive to maintain, closes, and sits empty. Demolition follows, and campaigners meet the cost of bringing it back. Even so, the outlines left in the ground at Abergavenny, the memories collected by local groups and the example of Pontypridd show that these places still matter to the communities around them.

A Legacy Written in Water

The lost lidos of Wales were more than places to cool off. They were built by miners, volunteers and unemployed workers, and they gave their towns somewhere to meet when money was short. Pontypridd proves that a lost pool can sometimes be won back, and the rest are remembered in photographs, in the memories of those who swam there and in campaigns that have not yet given up.