Hoylake Baths
I can only just about remember the Hoylake Outdoor swimming pool that used to be on the site of our new lifeboat station. I moved to Meols in 1976 and can remember riding my bike around the outside of the old baths with my mates.
I’ll look for some other photos another time but I have managed to stumble upon some old photos that the BBC has here that I thought I’d mention to you. They’re not great quality but worth a look anyways!
Who was that lady I wonder? And was it referred to as Hoylake Lido?
July 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
As a kid in the ’60s and ’70s I spent much of my summer at the Hoylake Baths. Lots of kids were given ‘contracts’ (season tickets) which cost only a few quid and that was the main summer entertainment. Regulars of the south facing ‘back wall’ developed fantastic tans and the ‘killer’ slide and diving stack there were realy scary. The ‘curly’ slide and the small kids’ slide were less daunting. The baths opened in mid May and closed in mid September. The temperature was displayed on the front gate - perhaps as low as 52 F in the early season but it could get up to 84F in a heat wave. It was the most wonderful pool of filtered seawater and huge at 70×50 yards. As a vyoung boy the Holake Amateur Swimming Club met there and hot ribena and oxo were served on the roof terrace to warm us up after swimming.
In a hot summer there would be long queues at the weekends - people literally poured off the trains from B’head and Liverpool - but the Hoylake Urban District Council neglected it badly but at least kept it open. When Hoylake was subsumed into the new Wirral MBC in 1974 it was only a matter of time until they found an excuse for closing it. The 1976 storms which did some minor damage were cited as the reason for the council closing the pool. However, an extraordinairy community protest with demos and angry public meetings in the YMCA public hall led to the council grudgingly agreeing to let local residents take control. The Hoylake Outdoor Pool Trust was set up and local residents voluneered to get the pool painted and open for the ‘76 season. It was a triumph anmd there was a wonderful community spirit. People were fighting for their town and a way of life. I was only 16 but spent every free moment labouring and painting the pool and in the summer I worked as a pool attendant and in the ice cream kiosk by the Hoyle slipway.
The Trust went on to take over another abandoned asset, the Hoylake Parish Hasll in Grove Place, and through the Job Creation Schemes run at the time to massage the unemployment figures the resources were found to undertakle a full renvation of the pool and the hall. The Miss Merseyside competition was held there every summer and iot was popular for synchronised swimming. Sadly a run of bad summers and the end of various funding streams contributed to the renamed Hoylake Pool & Community Trust hit the buffers in the mid ’80s. The rest is history. It was the last nail in the coffin of Hoylake as a small seaside resort town. Only a few years before the council hired deck chairs on the prom and there were Punch & Judy shows and the prom would be crammed on a hot summer’s weekend. The Wirral Council’s neglect extended to the Meols Prade Gardens which had been beautifully kept and Queen’s Park which are in a disgraceful state to this day.
Let’s hope that the plans to smarten up the promenade come to fruition.
To answer your question, the baths were never known as the lido but were eferred to as Hoylake Outdoor Pool during the Trust’s period of control. However, now that so few are left nationally there has been renewed interest in the lidos around the country most of which like Hoylake date back to the ’20s and ’30s. Some have been restored and even a few new ones built.
One thing is for sure the demise of Holake Baths marked the end of an era in Hoylake, outdoor swimming is a way of life not just a form of exercise.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Hi Peter - thanks for a great comment!
You’ve reminded me that my mates called the big slide the ‘killer’ - I’d completely forgotten that. Wouldn’t suit me at all as I’m a dreadful swimmer!
I might be getting my hands on some more info about the baths in a week or three - hopefully I’ll get some photos to scan and publish.
John