Many thanks to Josef Hanik, Senior Ranger for Wirral Coast, for sending me the above photo of bathers enjoying the water at the long-gone West Kirby bathing pool. I presume the large building behind the bathing pool is the former Hydro Hotel. Was the bathing pool open to the public or just for patrons of the hotel? There’s no date on the image – care to hazard a guess?
While you’re not allowed to swim in Marine Lake today (other than for the Boxing Day Dip) it’s a very popular venue for sailing and wind surfing.
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The pool was awful, full of mud, seaweed and barnacles. However, the changing rooms were much better than those at the Hoylake pool as they had a glass roof which let the sun & light in.
It was for public bathing.
It was a public swimming baths open to all – and freezing cold as well! I think I have some old postcards of the site – I’ll look them out
Peter Absalom comments:
Thanks for this photo! Of course the baths were open to the public – certainly not just for Hydro Hotel patrons, who probably been too ‘refined’ to patronise them anyway.. Whatever the murkiness of the water may have been (and it was pretty unhygienic), the baths were a regular meeting place for West Kirby residents and visitors on summer days. My family used to swim there regularly before the War (when this photo appears to have been taken) and, when the baths reopened after the War, I used to cycle along the prom almost every day to have what (according to the tickets) was a “plunge” in the baths. The swimming area was separated from the rest of the lake merely by a rope and there was a three-stage diving platform and somewhat splinter-prone wooden water chute…..
Dave Smith comments:
The Marine lake bathing pool was open to the public, and was very popular when I was a child in West Kirby in the late forties.
I was a pupil at St Bridgets, which at that time was a Secondary Modern School, and once a week during the Summer months, the class would be walked down to the pool, and taught how to swim. I still have my certificates, twentyfive yards breaststroke and basic life saving.
Mick Gutierrez comments:
Yes the pool was open to the public and chargeable at a turnstile. I remember trying to get in for free, as young boys did, down the slipway and then onto the wall which was railed, but still did not stop us. I lived in West Kirby in the 1960′s and went swimming there on many occasion
As you look at the photo, to the far right was the male entry and on the far left was for ladies. Happy happy memories.
My sister Les used to go swimming there in her lunch break in the 60′s. She said it was freezing.
My mum learned to swim in the public baths in the fifties. The houses behind the baths shown in the picture are still there on Banks Road – the Hydro was further along. Its just that the Hilbre Court Flats were not built when the picture was taken. The foundation of the public baths can still be seen on the prom.
Even when I was a youngster in the late seventies/eighties I spent many a happy summer down at the “old baths” with my friend Cath. The changing rooms were gone by then but you could still swim out to the blocks where the diving boards once were.
Happy days x