Droitwich - Entrance To Lido Park - geograph

The Droitwich Spa Lido is a

lido Lido may refer to: Geography Africa * Lido, a district in the city of Fez, Morocco Asia * Lido, an area in Chaoyang District, Beijing * Lido, a cinema theater in Siam Square shopping area in Bangkok * Lido City, a resort in West Java owned by MN ...

Droitwich Spa Droitwich Spa (often abbreviated to Droitwich ) is an historic spa town in the Wychavon district in northern Worcestershire, England, on the River Salwarpe. It is located approximately south-west of Birmingham and north-east of Worcester, Engl ...

, Worcestershire, England. It is one of the few remaining inland, open-air salt-water

swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...

s in the UK.

Brief history

The Lido was originally built in the 1930s to a design by

Edward Prentice Mawson Edward Prentice Mawson (1885 in Ambleside, Westmorland – 22 December 1954 in Lancaster) was the eldest of the nine children of Thomas Hayton Mawson, and, like his father a British garden designer, landscape architect, and town planner.Oxford D ...

and the building features an

art-deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United ...

style interior. The pool itself was filled with diluted

brine Brine is a high-concentration solution of salt (NaCl) in water (H2O). In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawater, on the lower end of that of solutions used for br ...

, pumped from brine streams beneath the town. The

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

in the water was strong enough to keep the water in the pool

aseptic Asepsis is the state of being free from disease-causing micro-organisms (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses, pathogenic fungi, and parasites). There are two categories of asepsis: medical and surgical. The modern day notion of asepsis is deriv ...

, without the need for additional chemicals such as

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate betwee ...

. When the lido opened, it was marketed as the ' seaside come to

', and the pool was heated to exactly the same temperature as the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...

. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the lido was closed, and its offices used by the military.

Resurrection

The lido continued to be a popular tourist attraction. Even after its closure at the end of the 1990s, people still travelled for miles just to see the once-popular pool. In late 2004,

Wychavon Wychavon is a local government district in Worcestershire, England, with a population size of 132,500 according to the 2021 census. Its council is based in the town of Pershore, and the other towns in the district are Droitwich Spa and Evesha ...

District Council voted against the re-opening of the lido, which sparked a local campaign group to form, with the sole aim of seeing the lido restored. Called "Save a Lido Today" (SALT), the group put pressure on the various councils and even went so far as to provide a business plan. In April 2005, the people of Droitwich Spa held a parish

poll Poll, polled, or polling may refer to: Figurative head counts * Poll, a formal election ** Election verification exit poll, a survey taken to verify election counts ** Polling, voting to make decisions or determine opinions ** Polling places o ...

in which 98% of the people who voted were in favour of restoring the Lido. Following this, SALT continued to work with the District and Town councils to restore the Lido to a working condition. In the summer of 2007, the Lido reopened. One of the schools in Droitwich, Westacre Middle School, was the first to be able to go into the pool. Although the diving area has been filled-in to lower the

water heating Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. In industry, hot water and water heated t ...

costs, the original 1930s fascia was left intact and the water still uses the salt that is the reason for the existence of Droitwich Spa itself.

External links

Save A Lido Today (SALT) Campaign Website

A virtual tour of the Lido
{{coord, 52.265918, -2.145038, display=title Buildings and structures in Worcestershire Sports venues in Worcestershire History of Worcestershire Lidos Droitwich Spa