One of the most depressing and telling sights of the 1980s was the derelict West Ham Lido in east London boarded up and closed to swimmers in the sweltering summer of 1989, while a poster stuck to the entrance advertised TWA flights to Miami, urging locals to "strip off this winter". In the same year the lidos at London's Kennington Park, Southwark Park and Victoria Park were demolished. Brockwell Lido in south London (now back in action) was mothballed. It seemed that lidos - open-air swimming pools with ample sun-bathing surrounds often set in parkland - were as dead as the dodo or as dated as men's one-piece swimsuits or cinema organs.
Their heyday certainly was the 1920s and 1930s, when scores were built up and down Britain, from Stonehaven to Penzance, mainly by local authorities. They remained hugely popular for 20 years or so after the second world war but a long decline set in from the 1960s, when multi-purpose leisure centres incorporating indoor pools were seen as the way of the future - more modern, more in tune with the white heat of technology, better value for money.
The 1980s was perhaps their worst decade, when, under pressure from Thatcherite controls on local government, dozens were destroyed and they became an endangered species. But lidos, though still endangered, are making a timely comeback, as climate change makes its presence felt and British summers heat up. Some have been saved from the brink of destruction, others have been refurbished and improved and there are even plans to build new pools.
What is being revived and rediscovered is not just something to do with health and exercise (important as these are) but part of the cultural and communal fabric. According to Simon Inglis, editor of the Played in Britain series of books for English Heritage, lidos are a vital example of "noncommercialised public space. As public space recedes everywhere and commerciality intrudes into every crevice of recreational life, lidos provide a genuine haven, where you're not bombarded with messages urging you to buy things. They are places to linger and provide benefits for the physical, mental and spiritual life of the nation."
Outdoor lidos provide a completely different experience from the enclosed and clinical ambience of indoor pools. You can swim surrounded by nature, in contact with the sky and the weather and often with birds and trees. Lidos are one of the few spaces in a city where freedom is combined with safety, precious for both children and adults. There is also a theatrical element, as the recently deceased Roger Deakin, author of Waterlog, the definitive book on outdoor swimming, explained: "You go to lidos to bathe and to be seen to bathe."
The original lido (literally "shore") is the one in Venice, the Lido di Venezia, where Aschenbach gazed longingly at Tadzio. Open-air pools with the spirit of bathing shores were built all over Europe as part of the back-to-nature movement that followed the first world war. A key text of this movement (now sounding slightly dodgy) is Hans Suren's Man and Sunlight, addressed to "you who are sunlovers! You bear ardent longings in your hearts! Longings after warm sunshine, blue skies, light and nature; after victorious strength, spiritual loftiness and childlike faith."
In the 1920s Britain lagged behind some other European countries. A report by the Playground and Recreation Society of America compared British provision unfavourably with that of Italy (where Mussolini's Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro programme had been launched in 1925) and Weimar Germany.
The great lido decade was the 1930s, when as many as 180 were built in Britain. No city took its lidos more seriously than London. The first lido to be named as such was the one in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, opened by London Commissioner of Works George Lansbury in 1931.
The greatest promoter of lidos in the period was the London County Council, which built six in the 1920s and then, under the Labour leadership of Herbert Morrison, embarked on a programme to build 10 more in the 1930s. Seven were completed, including those at Brockwell Park, Parliament Hill Fields, London Fields and Victoria Park. Morrison was justified in saying that he was making the capital "a city of lidos."
If lidos on the continent were mainly about health and a quasi-religious sun worship, in Britain they quickly took on different connotations. Beauty parades, diving competitions and water polo were part of a package of democratic entertainment. As artist Tracey Emin says in her foreword to Liquid Assets, Janet Smith's new English Heritage guide to British lidos and open-air pools, recalling childhood days spent at Margate Lido, lidos were "incredibly glamorous".
A somewhat more mellow form of enjoyment seems to be at the heart of the current lido revival - or the concerted attempt to save and reinvent what is left of the heritage of lidos for the future.
A good case in point is the Brockwell Lido, a magnificent 50-metre pool set in a precinct beautifully ensconced within Brockwell Park in south London. (Here I must declare an interest: Brockwell lido was my local pool for nearly 20 years and I served on the steering committee of Brockwell Lido Users). Originally built by Lambeth Council and the LCC in 1937, by 1989 the Brockwell Lido looked set to suffer the fate of so many others - thought poor value for money by a cash-strapped council and consigned to oblivion.
Fortunately the pool was mothballed and not demolished. In 1994 it reopened, under laid-back and stylish new management. Two heat-wave summers came obligingly in succession and suddenly the Brockwell Lido, far from being dowdy and old-fashioned, was the place to be. There was a parallel here with the revived popularity of certain once-staid English seaside resorts such as Whitstable and Southwold.
The lido featured on the cover of Time Out and a wonderfully off-beat BBC2 documentary was made by Lucy Blackstad, which stressed the sheer pleasure people found in this urban oasis. A quirky and democratic mixture of people was part of the success. The documentary showed the head of the civil service disrobing by the poolside as well as a lesbian wedding. Here the Lido was recapturing part of its original spirit: Sir Josiah Stamp, chairman of the Bank of England, had said in 1936: "Bathing reduces rich and poor, high and low, to a common standard of enjoyment and health. When we get down to swimming, we get down to democracy."
Not just classlessness but hedonism and a therapeutic tranquillity were central to people's appreciation of the lido. In 2001 a questionnaire survey was carried out at Brockwell lido under the direction of market researcher and swimmer Yvonne Levy. The 874 questionnaires completed revealed a remarkable depth of feeling about the pool.
One respondent wrote: "The lido is more than just a place to swim. It brings all kinds of people together without any aggression: a natural community centre in all that it means. A place where one can be. I know of no other place that gives this service." Another confessed, "At nightmare times the lido has helped me get things together. It's not just a functional place to swim. It sorts your brain out and I'm hugely thankful for that."
But by this time the lido was in financial trouble. The weather (though still warmer than the long-term average) had reverted closer to the English norm of occasional good summers mixed with indifferent ones and the managers had found, despite striking a sponsorship deal with Evian and renting out the poolside buildings for activities such as yoga and children's music and drama groups, that it was hard to maintain such a facility with minimal subsidy. Yvonne Levy and others formed a users group, with the questionnaire survey as its basis, which would fight hard over the coming years to keep the pool open. The lido was listed in 2003, which paved the way for a £400,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Eventually a solution was reached involving Lambeth Council, the not-for-profit leisure company Fusion and the architects PTEa.
As Jo Edwards of PTEa explains: "The buildings on the south side of the lido are being doubled in size, to allow more space for yoga and other activities, while the inner sanctum of the pool area remains unchanged. These other activities will bring in enough income to make the pool financially sustainable." Work begins this autumn and should be complete by June or July next year. The architects' plans show great respect for the original 1937 design by LCC architects Rowbotham and Smithson. Edwards says she finds "the understated art deco/proto-modernist architecture elegant and quietly eloquent. Our approach is to make subtle interventions that allow the 1930s features of the original building to come forward and not to sully them by crass imitation."
Brockwell's sister lido at Parliament Hill Fields on the edge of Hampstead Heath has also been much luckier than many. This splendid pool, even larger and rather more urban than Brockwell, passed into the hands of the City of London when the City took over Hampstead Heath after the disbanding of the GLC. An ancient and idiosyncratic body, said to be the richest local authority in Britain, the City showered largesse on the lido. In 2004-5 £2.9m was invested in a refurbishment including relining the pool bottom with stainless steel. This not only eliminates leaking and repairs but brings the water up to deck level, which is aesthetically pleasing and effective in skimming off scum from sun lotion.
"Further works are being planned to secure the lido's future for generations to come," says Hampstead Heath Superintendent Simon Lee, adding that "the Parliament Hill lido is a tremendous asset and one the City of London is proud to run."
Keeping lidos going is one thing but rescuing them from dereliction is quite another. The 1930s London Fields lido in Hackney, east London, has been abandoned and overgrown since 1989. But this year Hackney council announced a dramatic £3m resurrection. This involves not only rebuilding the 50-metre pool but also heating it. "This is a long-term investment", says the council's Dan Ward. "The pool will open in October and will be open next summer and for many summers to come. It will become the only heated Olympic-sized pool in London. We might make it available for training for the 2012 Olympics."
The lido revival is not confined to London. One of the most beautiful and dramatic lidos in Britain is the huge curved Tinside lido (180ft in diameter) below Plymouth Hoe, jutting out into Plymouth Sound. Built in art deco style in 1935 but damaged by storms and in poor repair, the pool was closed in 1992. Tinside Action Group was formed and this energetic association collected no less than 72,000 signatures on a petition that was presented to 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.
Remarkably, Tinside's revival became an election issue in the 2000 council elections, with the Tories pledging to rebuild and Labour opposed to the project. The Tories won and a £3.4m reconstruction began in 2002. According to leisure manager Alison Bradley, the pool is thriving. "We've had a fantastic summer, with attendances up on last year. It's like St Tropez only better. We've had evening swims on Fridays up till 10pm, with underwater lighting, music and the views over Plymouth Sound. You can't do that anywhere else in the world."
Another success story is the Sandford Parks lido in Cheltenham. Here an exceptionally active users' group actually took over management of the pool from the local council. They have managed to keep it going by exploiting a large car park and buildings around the poolside. As the lido's chief executive, Julie Sargent, explains: "A secondary stream of income is really important. As well as the car park, we have the rental income from a private gym on the site and we contract out the café in the summer."
These are all hopeful stories but the overall picture is much more mixed. The fate of many lidos remains in the balance, with most local authorities still looking to cast off costly non-statutory encumbrances. An example is Broomhill Pool in Ipswich, an unusual lido with a 700-seat grandstand. Despite being the only Olympic-sized pool in East Anglia, Broomhill was closed in 2002. The council has pledged £1m towards its restoration - but only as long as an equivalent sum of money is raised from other sources.
As Simon Inglis points out: "Not a single lido remains in the great cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, which used to be well served with lidos." London may seem well supplied with lidos but out of 68 in use in 1950, only eight remain.
What does the future hold? Hopeful signs include planning approval for the reopening of mothballed lidos in Uxbridge, west London, and Droitwich, Worcestershire. Uxbridge has also received a £1m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund - but another £7m is needed. More ambitious is a plan, still in very early stages, to build a lido near the site of the bulldozered New Brighton Bathing Pool (reputed to have been the largest outdoor pool in the world) in the Wirral, as part of a redevelopment scheme for the run-down resort. As for Tracey Emin, she has a dream of designing "a chain of lidos by the Thames, using a mix of river water and fresh water. They would be oval-shaped, with an egg-like roof, which opens up when the sun comes out."
Building new pools certainly seems to make more sense than destroying old ones. Surely the preservation of lidos should be a concern not just for local government but for central government too. A lido revival would bring together government aims and commitments to make us all fitter and leaner, to achieve community inclusion and to reduce carbon emissions.
All this makes the continued reluctance of (Lottery-backed) Sport England to support outdoor pools seem unpardonably blinkered. The days of cheap sun, sea and sand holidays might be numbered as climate change renders displacement to the Mediterranean (itself a source of carbon emissions) unnecessary. According to some predictions the British climate will soon be attracting tourists fleeing the unbearable heat of southern-European summers.
Once the resort of those who could not afford foreign holidays, lidos now bring together a more varied community. As one swimmer quoted in Liquid Assetsremarks: "When people swim together on a regular basis, a bond develops. They share things when they are at the pool and are concerned for each other when the pool closes."
