Postcard from Bath: Britain’s oldest lido prepares to reopen

Bath is full of secrets, well-kept by its citizens. Decades ago, I borrowed a basement flat in one of its Georgian terraces, the cellar of which led to a seemingly infinite system of subterranean passages that ran beneath the pavements. At night, I would lie awake near the centre of this Unesco World Heritage city, listening to the local teenagers screeching and cackling from its flagstoned depths. 

When I learnt that Britain’s oldest open-air lido had stood mostly derelict and overgrown on Bath’s fringes for nearly 40 years, I was keen to see this secret, too. The Grade II-listed Cleveland Pools first opened in 1817 and later in the 19th century was run by the eccentric Captain Evans, who had a pet baboon, held spectacular gala parties and apparently would impress onlookers by diving into the pool from a great height, wearing a tall hat to protect his head. After latterly being used as a trout farm, restoration efforts began in 2003 and on September 24 the pools are finally due to reopen to the public once more.

I head east of the historic heart of the city, past the Lovelywash Launderette. Beyond, down an alleyway off a residential street and next to the River Avon, lie the pools. 

At first sight and at the tail-end of a long heatwave, their waters look irresistible. Frustratingly, when I visit they are not quite ready for swimmers, but David Barnes, an architect with Donald Insall Associates who led the restoration, shows me around. 

“What’s delightful about the pools is that they are so simple, clean and low-key,” says Barnes. A modest Georgian ticketing office, caretaker’s lodge and a pretty curved terrace of changing rooms have been restored, all in that honeyed Bath stone. Hot showers and a kiosk have been added. “They are very hidden away in this isolated spot. That was also their undoing, of course, the reason they were neglected.” 

How did this city come to build a cold-water lido? After all, Bath is bursting with natural hot springs

I’m curious. How did this city come to build a cold-water lido? After all, Bath is bursting with natural hot springs, and was founded by the Romans in the 1st century AD as a thermal spa. Later, wealthy Georgian society spent months of the year lolling about in Bath’s warm waters. That explains the neoclassical terraces — they were built often as short-term lets to accommodate this early 19th-century boom in extended luxury wellness retreats. But who would swim here?

“The Avon at Bathwick was always popular for bathing for Bath’s ordinary working people,” says Barnes. “But people swimming in the river didn’t suit polite Georgian society.” 

Nude bathing was especially egregious. The 1801 Bathwick Water Act prohibited it, but by 1815 cold-water swimming had become a national craze, recommended by physicians, particularly for chronic conditions. More people swam in the Avon and something had to be done. A public subscription was established; 85 private donors signed up.

John Pinch the Elder, an architect and opportunistic property developer, was engaged (Babington House in Somerset is also his work; so are parts of Bath, including the dreamlike Sion Hill Place and sedate Cavendish Crescent). Pinch took the job on a pro bono basis, hoping the new pools would serve the residents of a planned expansion to the city, from which he hoped to profit. He was out of luck: the length and expense of the Napoleonic wars ended Bath’s Georgian building boom.

Nevertheless, Cleveland “Pleasure Baths” were cut from the bank of the Avon and filled with river water. Pinch built a crescent of changing rooms beside the main pool, as well as a secluded ladies’ bathing pool and the lodge. Later, the cholera pandemic of the 1830s led to more demand and the digging of a tepid pool. 

In Barnes’ renovation, evidence of the past is everywhere, from the pit-scars of ivy in the lodge’s soft Bath stone to the original cast-iron ranges in the fireplaces, which have somehow survived. “It’s a very light touch,” says Barnes. “Rather than disguise everything, we’ve tried to express things that have gone on before.” 

A pandemic, a craze for cold-water swimming — it all sounds very familiar. In fact, Bath’s residents swam here until 1978, when the city’s leisure centre opened and it was abandoned. When the council advertised the site for sale, a trust run by volunteers secured a 150-year lease and raised more than £9mn from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England, among others.

Today, Cleveland Pools have been redug, tiled and modernised. Next year, its operators hope to install a water source heat pump, but for now, it is cold bathing only. The full Georgian experience.

Barnes likes to think of the site as Bath in microcosm: a crescent, water and social history. “And we wanted to keep that connection with the river,” he says. So his team cleared vegetation to restore the view. 

Out on the river, a pleasure cruise full of tourists sails past. There is an audible “Oooh”. Bath will not be able to keep this secret.