A railway poster in 1932 suggested travellers visit Southport – the ‘Paris of the North’ – in preference over any other European destination, for one reason only: its open-air swimming pool.
Set in Prince’s Park, next to the Marine Lake and close to the pier, this huge, oval-shaped pool also had a café with a glass-domed roof, where an orchestra would play every afternoon. As the railway poster declared, ‘swimming pool is far too prosaic a name to describe the magnificent temple that Southport has built to the goddess of air and water and sunshine. Here the youth and beauty of the town disport themselves in the most elegant surroundings and men and maidens meet in pleasant cafes surrounding the pool to talk about the concert that is over, or the dance that is to come’.
At the grand opening on 17th May 1928, Lord Derby cut the ribbon, and was presented with roses by local girls dressed in his racing colours of black and white. A group of children then swam the length of the pool, followed by a parade of ladies wearing costumes made of silk and taffeta from a local store and finally St Hilda’s Band entertained the crowd with a selection of popular songs. ‘One was reminded forcibly of the Lido’, commented the local paper, in one of the first known uses of the term lido (after the shore in Venice) to describe a British open air pool.
It closed in 1989 and was demolished in 1993.
Thanks to Liquid Assets by Janet Smith.
