More images:

1. General view of swimming bath when originally open
2. Entrance to changing room area
3. The state of the pool today
4. Stagnant water
5. Exterior from the road
6. Archive photo of exterior and pool at nightime
7. Steps
8. Female changing room
9. Male changing room

Broomhill Pool was opened to the public on April 30th 1938 with special souvenir programmes selling for 3d. The Mayor of Ipswich, George Underwood Esq, read a four minute speech and shortly afterwards the very first swimming races took place: Ipswich vs. Leamington, followed by a display of diving by the Lucratics and a water polo match.

This pool is of a type commonly known as a lido, but in the original literature it is referred to simply as a bathing pool. Situated on the northwest side of Ipswich, Broomhill was built partly to match its counterpart on the eastern side of town: Piper's Vale Swimming Pool, which had opened the previous year, on June 12th 1937.

No effort was spared to make this a pool to be proud of and early black and white photos show a bathing facility of stunning beauty. The main pool was 165' x 60' (just over 50m long) and therefore frequently referred to as 'Olympic' in size. The depth varied from 3' to 7'6", with a wonderful 15' diving pit: (the pool floor was reinforced underneath with concrete to withstand the upward water pressure). For water polo a minimum depth of 6' was provided along a 90' stretch.

The smaller inhabitants of Ipswich had a 60' wide and 37.5' long children's pool with a uniform depth of 2'9" and the total capacity for both pools was 464,000 gallons. The souvenir programme gave painstaking engineering details: for example, how the walls were cantilevered to resist both earth and water pressure; how a special surround of 2" 'foothold' red and grey paving slabs in draught board pattern were laid to give a special non-slip surface; and the exact thickness of the concrete at all points.

Everything about the pool was on a generous and spacious scale. The spectators' grandstand on the right of the pool had space for 700 people on five tiers of seating, 70 ladies' changing cubicles were housed beneath this, whilst men had 108 cubicles on the left hand side of the pool (above ground), and 619 'baskets' could be housed in the basket room. Sunbathing terraces ran along the whole length on this left hand side and a small buffet at the far end of the pool completed the happiness of swimmers and spectators alike. For divers there was a steel-framed diving stage with 5,4,3,and 2-meter boards and a separate 1-meter springboard and, astonishingly, these have survived to this day.

The pool was originally both floodlit and heated, and the filtration plant was considered to be one of the best in the country, capable of dealing with 155,000 gallons an hour. This meant an average turnover of three hours to provide water that would be 'above suspicion'!

For sixty years this pool was part of the fabric of Ipswich, but in 1998 the borough council considered its future and opted for only a five-year plan. Realising the danger of losing this pool and many others, the Twentieth Century Society were instrumental in getting it listed in 2001. This timely act has enabled campaigners to wage a concerted battle for the pool's long-term future and for the next nine months Broomhill Pool will be the focus of a full-scale feasibility study. Grateful thanks go to the Twentieth Century Society for their part in saving this pool from demolition: although closed for three years now, there is still hope for its future.

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