Page 61 - BR December 2023

December 2023 December 2023
DROITWICH SPA LIDO

I last visited Droitwich Spa Lido on
30 .May 2008 with my friend Dave
th
Pratten in our bid to swim a mile in every
UK lido. It was one of the pools in Janet
Smith’s book “Liquid Assets” detailing the
history of the great British lido. In the back
of Janet’s brilliant book published in 2005
was a long list of around 400/500 defunct
lidos and Droitwich was amongst them.
It had closed in 2000 and I guess many
thought that it would never open again.
However, amazingly with a great deal of
local support and 2 million pounds worth of refurbishment, the pool rose like
phoenix from the ashes. In 2007 the year it re-opened, 23,000 people used it in a
really poor summer.
When we arrived, the early evening sun
was still shining brightly on the pool and
it seemed to positively sparkle and
glisten. Diana and I were given a
friendly welcome by Matt Jupp who
manages the pool with his colleague
Sandra Webb. Matt comes from
London and has spent a couple of
seasons at the lido working for
Wychavon Leisure at Droitwich along
wi th Persh ore , Eves ham an d
Bromsgrove leisure centres during the
winter months.
The lido dates back to 1935 when Mr Ralph Lynn accompanied by his daughter
Betty, declared the new pool open on Whit Monday, 6 . June. It is one of only a
th
few brine pools in the country and when I swam there in 2008, the water tasted
very salty indeed so would it be the same today?
More later...

The pool currently has a marvellous exhibition brought about by the Droitwich Air
Cadets supported by Wychavon District Council Community Service. They carried
out research on the lido into news and photo archives, selecting and editing
stories and images and developing scripts to share with the wider community. The
exhibition presents a fascinating audio and visual insight into the history of the
pool and includes some amazing interviews with past regular users. It is well worth

32 61