Grange Over Sands Lido

Lido, 1932

This lido was designed by Bernard Smith, the Grange over Sands Urban District Council Surveyor, and built in 1932. It is constructed of concrete with brick ancillary buildings and concrete dressings, with slate roof coverings.

The lido is arranged around a roughly semi-circular plan with splayed sides. The focal point is the main bathing pool, which has a distinctive mushroom-shaped cross-section, sloping down towards the east where it narrows to form a deep end. Flanking this on the south-east and north-east sides are stepped terraces for seating. To the centre of the east side is a single-storey rectangular pump house with an attached arched diving stage of five levels (though the diving boards have been removed). Steps with iron railings lead from the poolside up to the flat roof of the pump house, which formerly gave access to the diving boards. A small children's paddling pool is situated immediately east of the ladies' changing rooms.

The entrance building forms the centrepiece of the landward side. It is a two-storey pavilion of five bays with a pitched roof over the three central bays and hipped roofs over the slightly projecting end bays. The building has overhanging eaves and an eaves cornice. The ground floor contains five sets of paired windows separated by piers, with openings on each return giving access to raised sun terraces. The upper floor is supported on narrower piers flanked by slender Doric columns, and contains a viewing gallery with five openings overlooking the bathing pool and single openings to each return. The blocked windows of the main elevation retain their original six-paned wooden frames. Some remodelling of the ground floor has occurred, but original openings remain providing access to the external sundecks and stairs to the upper viewing gallery.

To either side of the entrance building and sun terraces are separate ladies' (north) and gentlemen's (south) changing blocks. These are single and two-storey structures with plain elevations and openings on all sides. The two-storey parts have hipped roofs and the single-storey parts have flat roofs, the latter extending along parts of the north and south sides of the pool. These flat roofs functioned as sunbathing areas, accessed from the adjacent sun decks by steps bounded by metal railings. Limited inspection of the ground floors revealed three plain rooms with brick and painted brick walls.

The lido is enclosed on its seaward side by a curvilinear brick wall erected on top of a buttressed concrete sea defence wall. On the landward side it is bounded by a brick wall with large gated entrances between piers at its north and south ends.