Tinside Lido
Interesting facts
- The pool was built by two major contractors, Edmund Nuttall and Sons and John Mowlem and Company, both famous for large civil engineering works.
- Its three fountains were not only decorative: they were designed to aerate the seawater in the pool.
- The Art Deco staircase down the cliff still keeps its original tiling, balustrade and a relief figure.
- The entrance building dates from 1933, two years before the pool itself was completed.
- Restoration removed or filled in the original three tidal pools, the pontoons and the diving boards.
- The lido draws its biggest crowds of the year for the summer solstice celebrations.
- Along its north-east side runs a sea wall with three semicircular bastions, broad steps to the shore and sheltered terraces facing the pool.
- Its designer, the borough engineer John Wibberley, died in 1936, only a year after the pool opened.
Why it is worth it
Tinside Lido is an open-air seawater pool on the rocky foreshore below Plymouth Hoe, looking out over Plymouth Sound. Designed by the city engineer John Wibberley and opened on 2 October 1935, it is one of the most elegant Art Deco lidos in Britain: a great semicircle of pale blue water about 180 feet across, cut straight against the edge of the sea, ringed by cast-iron railings, with three fountains playing around it.
The design is simple and confident. The pool is filled with treated seawater and ranges from about two to nine feet deep; reinforced concrete walls and changing rooms with square metal windows give it the look of a liner moored on the rocks. From the water you see the Hoe above and the Sound opening to the sea, which is exactly what the architects of the 1930s intended: bathing as a public, sunny pleasure in the heart of the city.
As use declined, the pool closed in 1992. A local campaign saved it: Tinside was listed Grade II in 1998, and after a restoration costing about £3.4 million the pool was back in use in 2005, with a lift and hoist added later so that more people could reach the water. It opens in the summer months, from May to September.
Getting there
The lido is on the seafront below Plymouth Hoe, less than a kilometre from the city centre. The nearest major airport is Exeter International Airport (EXT), about 66 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Tinside Lido is a 1935 Art Deco lido in the city of Plymouth in southwest England. It is sited beside Plymouth Sound and is overlooked by Plymouth Hoe and Smeaton's Tower. The lido opens in the summer months between May and September.
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