By Harry Mottram: Closed by floods in January 2024 but opened just months earlier Bath’s Cleveland Pools has remained shut ever since. The Grade I Georgian lido was opened after having been neglected and left semi derelict for years until a long campaign to reclaim it with a £9.3m restoration. The Cleveland Pools Trust (CPT) have given an update said they planned to reopen the attraction but there would need to be more cash needed to solve the issue of flooding.
The BBC reported the newly appointed chair of CPT, Peter Askew, has said the “scale of the work means there is a significant funding challenge”.
“Funding the cost of the repairs is now our primary focus,” he continued, explaining that while there was no fixed timeline for the repairs “we’re going to move absolutely as quickly as we can because we understand that the public wants to get in there again and get swimming”.
He said technical and engineering investigations had found pipework beneath the main pool needs repairing, as well as the site’s plant room. Askew said it was ‘deeply disappointing for everyone involved to see the pools close again so soon after reopening.’ He said the trust was now considering further changes to improve the site’s resilience to extreme weather events and he remained optimistic.
The Trust noted on their website that: “The likelihood that the site would flood was a key consideration of the original restoration design. The Trust is now reviewing whether further changes could be made as part of the repairs to improve the resilience to future weather events.”
However the Trust and its members have been widely criticised for a lack of competency and accountability with neighbours claiming the dangers of flooding were well known. Bath and North East Somerset Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund gave grants totalling millions of pounds in the 20-year long restoration project. The Trustees have changed over the years but they work unpaid as volunteers and it is fair to say the reopening of the attraction was widely supported by Bathonians.
Opened in 1815 – as a river fed pool – the lido enjoyed its heyday in Victorian times as a cold water swimming pool. By the 20th century it was beginning to show its age but remained open to the public when during the heat of the 1976 drought was one way for families to cool down that summer. It closed in 1984 when its future became uncertain. It was used as a trout farm and even faced potential demolition at one stage as Bath and North East Somerset Council put it up for sale before the campaign to bring it back into use for the general public began. The facilities are far different from those faced by the Georgian gents who often plunged in naked – the updated pools featured a smaller children’s pool and improved changing rooms. For more on the pools see the website which has more information as well as notes on the Trust members, volunteers and patrons who include in their number Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies.
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