Making a splash in Tooting

Tooting Bec Lido, which gets a new pump house this year, has been a mecca for overheated or over-brave swimmers for 106 years. Here TOBY PORTER outlines its extraordinary history.

Women were only allowed to swim at Tooting Bathing Lake one day a week – and without men present – until 1931.

And even once there was mixed bathing, an “aerator”, or fountain, was installed to ensure the water was properly cleaned.

Because women, it was thought apparently, needed higher standards of hygiene to men.

It was clearly a very different time, now that we know women can swim, run and fight with the muckiest of men.

Like Brad Pitt, for example.

The alternating bright red, yellow, and green doors of the changing cubicles seen above the turquoise water have made the pool a popular location for adverts and movies.

Pitt’s boxing “pool” scene in Snatch was filmed at the lido.

The pool is one of Britain’s oldest open-air baths – it opened to the public on Saturday, July 28. 1906 as the Tooting Bathing-Lake.

Digging the lake had been suggested by the Reverend John Hendry Anderson, Rector of Tooting, as a project to provide work for unemployed local men.

The rector of Tooting Graveney from 1897 and Mayor of Wandsworth in 1904–05 also helped create Tooting Library.

He died in Tooting in 1913 and there is a memorial to him in Holy Trinity church, Tooting, though sadly not in the shape of a pair of trunks.

The lido holds more than one million gallons of water. It is 91.5metres long, with a separate pool for toddlers, a cafe and space for sunbathing and picnics.

Segregation of the sexes was enforced from its opening, with women and girls confined to one morning a week until 1931, and then only at specified times.

Five years later, in 1936, a cafe was built along with cubicles with proper doors. It was only around this time that the pool became known as a “lido” – when the term came into widespread use in England.

It was nearly closed as a result of Wandsworth council’s financial cutbacks in the early 1990s, which led to the closure of the borough’s other lido at King George’s Park.

It was saved as a result of the campaigning efforts of the South London Swimming Club (SLSC), who took over the management of the lido outside the summer season.

Since 1999, improvements have been made to the lido.

The most visible – and controversial at the time – was the move of the public entrance to the northern shallow end.

This ended the need for children and non-swimmers to pass along the narrow paths at the southern deep end.

The new entrance was initially highly visible from across the common, reduced the lido’s seclusion, and made the lido’s northern terrace windier.

Plantings of willow trees outside the entrance made it more invisible from the surrounding roads.

The pool was drained and repainted in 2005 before a summer programme of events to celebrate its centenary.

New lining and paving was done in the winter of 2006–07.

The lido reopened to members of the SLSC in March 2007, when they hosted the Cold Water Championships.

It was labelled “a South London treasure” by The Daily Telegraph and named by Time Out magazine as the best in place in the capital for “uninterrupted swimming” and as the “Best Outdoor Swim in London” in The London Pools Campaign’s Golden Goggles Award.

In 2017 a new £900,000 pavilion building was built at the deep end of the pool on the site of the former entrance.

It provides a new all-year round sports hall, workout space, events and training courses and a new courtyard for sunbathing space.

The lido is only open to the general public from late May to the end of September every year.

But if you like a freezing swim on a winter’s night, it is home to the SLSC who have exclusive use of the lido during the winter months – 7am-2pm.