CovSoc member John Marshall, chair of Stoke Local History Group, highlights an almost forgotten pool, once hidden behind Kingsway. John writes…..
THE 1930s has been described as “the golden age of lidos” when outdoor swimming became popular, and many pools were created around Britain, either at seaside locations such as Scarborough – with its famously elegant South Bay Lido – or at inland locations like Tottenham or Edmonton in London.
Provincial towns were quick to join the race to create these fashionable outdoor pools – some known as lidos, others not – and Coventry was no exception. Two pools were opened in the city, one near Green Lane and the other next to Gosford Green in Stoke.
The pools in Coventry opened in the early 1930s and were privately financed and built, remaining popular until finally being pushed out of business in the 1960s by the irresistible allure of the smart new Coventry Baths.
The pool at Stoke, known as Gosford Park Pool, was located behind houses in Kingsway, tucked out of sight beside the railway embankment. The entrance was off Walsgrave Road, between Stoke Library and the railway bridge (now a road bridge). It became a well-used venue for sporting competitions – such as racing, diving or water polo – as well as for casual recreational swimming.
When it opened in May 1934, the Coventry Herald welcomed the new facility, saying it “will doubtless meet a very great demand in the heavily housed Stoke area”, and the paper described the unique features of the pool, such as artificial warming of the water which, it said, would make swimming attractive in all weathers. This feature, as we shall see, was not always apparent in later years.
The opening ceremony, we are told, featured a nationally known music hall entertainer called ‘Stainless Stephen’ who made an amusing speech and then became the first person to dive into the pool, where he engaged in mock combat with the ‘Loch Ness Monster’. This was followed by swimming displays from local champions, as well as a water polo match between Coventry teams.
The Deputy Mayor, at the opening ceremony, admitted that the Corporation Baths (in Priory Street) were sometimes overcrowded and he threw out the suggestion that some arrangement might be made with the owners to allow school children to use the new Stoke pool. This idea seems to have been taken up because generations of local children would later remember being taken to the pool for lessons.
A number of contributors to the Historic Coventry Forum recalled their experiences at Gosford Pool in the 1950s or early 60s, with most evoking at least a cold shiver or two: “I well remember going to Gosford Pool with my school, Frederick Bird’s,” said one man. “I hated it. It was so cold. Especially in the winter months.”
Another person agreed: “I also remember going to Gosford Pool with my school, St Mary’s. I never did learn to swim- it was too cold. The best thing about the visit was hot Oxo after the lesson!”
A woman from Wiltshire commented: “Like most kids who went to Stoke Junior, I learned to swim at Gosford Pool, spent a lot of summers there either swimming or sunbathing on the terrace, jumping off the diving boards and eyeing up the boys. One very famous day my sister dived in and lost the top of her bikini. There was a mass jump-in of boys volunteering to retrieve it. Simple fun, and the water was always warmer in the rain… Always a popular place.”
Another contributor recalled that Gosford Pool had a wider role, creating an important recreational space in a busy urban area. “Over eight years I spent a lot of time at the Gosford,” he wrote. “I must have seen hundreds of people turn up for a swim and found it too cold. But it had another side, many people found it a quiet haven in the city, just to sit and read in the sunshine. A number of young people brought books and did their homework in the quiet of the poolside. One guy in particular was Alf Tye (Coventry water polo captain) who one summer spent a huge amount of time at the pool, swotting for his finals before joining the Aussie Air Force.”
There was some agreement that Kenpas Pool, on the other side of the city, was posher than Gosford Pool, with one woman declaring that “Kenpas baths looked rather swish in their art deco style”. But despite complaints about cold water, it seems clear that the open-air facility at Gosford was enormously popular, especially in warm summers, when huge numbers would flock to the pool. Swimming at Gosford was complemented by indoor bathing at Livingstone Road Baths in Foleshill (opened in 1937) and by another open-air pool, on the outskirts of the city at Ryton Bridge Hotel.
But the city’s two open-air lidos, Gosford and Kenpas, would eventually fall victim to changing fashions and by the mid-1960s their future looked uncertain. In 1966 the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported what seemed like the end of an era. The owners of the Gosford Pool, it said, had taken the decision not to reopen that year. It had been popular enough in the past, the owners said, but now that so many people had cars, television sets and other amusements, enthusiasm for open-air swimming seemed to have dropped right off. There was also fierce competition from the newly opened central swimming baths, so the Gosford Pool had to close. The Kenpas Pool carried on for a few more seasons and in 1967 was renamed The Oasis, but it, too, would ultimately close. It was replaced by housing in a cul-de-sac, aptly known as Poolside Gardens.
This article first appeared in the July issue of Jabet’s Ash, the newsletter of Stoke Local History Group