Hi Kelly, thanks for that- I am actively looking for information, memories or stories on The South Bay Pool for my article at www.cambridge-photographer.co.uk/south-bay-pool-scarborough so If you'd like to share any memories with me i'd be very pleased to hear them. You can find my contact details on the link.

Doug, I shall rack my brains and see if I remember specifics. I do remember it being ever so cold - lips and nails being blue, even in the height of summer. And the shock of jumping in! I'll also have a look and see if I have any photos of it, although I'm unsure if these were disposed of when my Nana died.

Thanks for that Kelly- obviously photos would be wonderful but anything else you can remember will be great too.

Kelly, I'm with you... South Bay open air pool was brilliant... Salt water, full of sea weed... Suicidal diving boards, yep, I DID dive off it. Typical Scarborough council, the only thing they ever did right was getting rid of Jimmy Saville's mate, Jimmy Corrigan.

My Grandad told me he went to the top to have a look, but didn't dare jump off. Can't blame him.

Ive heard the Flamingo Land company are putting rides on the site.

what gets me is they cladded it and made it ugly in the same way everyone covered up their doors at home to make them look modern. many wanted it restored to its old hotel style frontage. the problem was they had too many grand old buildings and not enough money to deal with them as tourism number drastically declined and in that I mean they fell off a cliff in only 2-3 years. it was hard enough making enough money in the tourist season as it was and the council was the major seasonal employer. them and Don Robinson. the loss of many traditional party and union conferences didn't help. the constant revamp of the open air theatre is proof they keep trying although the loss of the zoo and marineland/kinderland/north bay pool hurt many who remember it. it has become a weekend resort now but still hanging on. hundreds of hotels converted to care homes but many have been split into apartments used by the wealthy from leeds to manchester. I did some kitchens in couple the other year for my mums business in york. whitby has survived rather better I think but my dad let slip about seeing Acker Bilk at whitby spa when he was young and I was 'whitby had a spa?' and 'you went over the moors on your scooter!!' although the whitby railway was probably still open when he went. filey relied on butlins for it's amusements as it lacked the seafront same as whitby. I hope brexit will see a return of the fishing fleet as a mainstay as it was when i was little and indeed why scarborough port was founded by the monks, many friends dads worked the boats while their grandparents and mum ran the associated chippies. all that are left are the crab boats and the odd inshore trawler.

well lets hope they do better than pleasureland or whatever it was called in cleethorpes. outdoor rides don't fare so well there anymore which was why they built olympia next door and took out the north bay funpark.

@@davidcollishaw2771 biggest theatre outside London and first they clad it like an old tin shed then they pull it down. Scandalous! Ruined north bay, used to be my favourite place to go, don't bother any more.

@@stepheng8779 the locals were up in arms about the futurist. Corruption in the council is rife - allegedly, what flamingoland wants flamingoland gets. They have a finance cheif who was done for fraud intje Us and a leader who covered up saville and jaconellis - depending on who you talk to.

I was cruising google earth a while back and something hit me as being missing, I was looking at the devastation on the north bay where the marine land had been ripped out trying to work out what I was failing to see. it took a while then I realised the north bay cliff lift had gone. turns out St Austell bought it, took it away and can't afford to put it back together. last year I did a tour de yorkshire to see the few relatives up there and cycled all the way from scalby mills to holbeck hill before heading towards leconfield along the remains of the old filey road. and joy of joys a september sea fret was coming in, one of the old pea soupers that heads inland and you cant see 30 feet. hadn't seen one in 35 years and was chuffed to bits. Portillo on the other hand was seen in his pink jacket racing for shore on the corona while they could still see to get back. back on topic there is a demand for safe sea/outdoor bathing - up at scalby mills there is still I think the remnant of a small paddling lido a by product of the works when they put the sewage pipes in.

Hi Steve, Thanks for that, its a really interesting film. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/as2Aa8WAv7m6pnk.html

Hi Steve, yes I did notice that. The author actually says the diving board was installed in 1934 in the same paragraph. Hope all is well with you.

Hi Steve, Yes the fountains certainly were impressive! We are all well and hope you are. Speak to you soon.

Hi Doug hope all is well with you?Ive just come across a guy who has a picture of the pool being pumped out in 2002.Hope he sends me it best wishes Steve.

Hi Steve, its a good idea, a book might well be possible. I am actually writing a book on something else right now, so it would have to be in a few years time as I am very busy! I have read the account about the pool during the German raids, which was very interesting- I didn't know about the Holbeck Hotel story, so thanks for that. I have found it very interesting to go through all my old pictures for the first time in many years, and get them digitised. I am glad I took so many pictures, but also sad because I could do much better with the equipment and experience I have now. The whole thing seems so very sad.

Thanks for that, it sounds like you might not be aware of the pool's demolition in 2003. You can read about it on the link below the video if you want to know more.

Hi David- thanks for your comment. I am always looking for information on the pool for my article at www.cambridge-photographer.co.uk/south-bay-pool-scarborough anything you can remember about the pool would interest me. If you want to share anything with me, you can find my contact details on the link.

okay I'll have a look and respond properly, I was fascinated at my grandmas tales of how scarborough was when she was growing up in the 20s and 30s. she had a holiday job sat on the seafront with a small primus stove popping corn all day long for one of the seafront shops who used to colour and sweeten it - according to the climate records the 30s were the hottest on record and still are. she used to tell me how thousands would sit on the banks looking down onto the pool where they used to do concerts, water circuses, clown shows and all sorts of entertainments. every saturday thousands of holidaymakers would just turn up and start knocking on doors for somewhere to stay, the locals would earn a bit extra by moving out of the town, up into attics, camping, bed sharing or anything to squeeze people in and ear a few extra bob. We had a block of flats above the spa lift so all my summers were spent with a season ticket down the south bay pool with a packed lunch but even in the 70s and 80s we used to have the odd family turn up with suitcases asking if we had any rooms. I remember the pool being packed in the late 70s and early 80s with the local lifeguards including an uncle diving off the high board which was a highlight, the local mums knew it was a sun trap for their tans and the kids were safer than paddling in the sea which still had raw sewage washing back up due to the outflow pipes being too short. as kids we played around it all winter long as it was easy to climb into and would go to the top of the high board which swayed in the wind, we were usually fascinated in the spring when they drained it to clear the hundreds of tons of sand washed into it over the winter as the pool would literally fill up to the top of the walls and the local scuba divers would play in it. the metal work took a serious hammering and the salt eventually leeched into the concrete of the structure causing it to blow which was why the high board was condemned and eventually the whole thing. the storms even managed to destroy a couple of the concrete chalet blocks as you come back towards the spa. every winter older kids would break into the cafe and chalets down that end causing massive amounts of damage or throw stones wrecking the integrity of the roofs. all of the shelters around the gardens suffered damage as well and it wasn't economical to keep them going when the rental revenues didn't cover the bills once the impact of cheap spanish holidays started to really bite in the early to mid 80s. the pool was probably beyond the lido revival seen elsewhere as it was a massive piece of real estate that suffered horrendous weather and was tucked too out of the way. the north bay pool could maybe have been switched to a lido but its endless reinventing and shifting to private hands failed to keep it going when people wanted indoor and warm. I've been to several of the revived lidos like portishead, morcambe., cheltenham, penzance etc.. and they are tiny in comparison, simpler and much easier to get to. the changing rooms and engineering went all the way under the cafe almost as big as the pool itself (the cafe could accommodate 400 or so even in the 80s. with no way to run any form of easy shuttle bus and the public didn't want to walk half a mile from the cliff lift or a mile down the cliff paths. it was hard enough to get the service equipment there and supplies to the cafe and shops. it was a shame to see it go but it was a death trap thanks to the vandalism and neglect with fewer and fewer sets of seating managing to survive to the following season and the endless patching of smashed concrete. it was an amazing example of concrete formwork designed like the sea walls there to deflect the wave energy backwards and protect those inside.

Hi David, this is great information, thank you, there is a lot of interesting points here, especially that the pool was being vandalised long before closure, and that the diving platform swayed in the wind. I will be very pleased to hear if there is anything else you can remember.

David do you remember or even go into the sun bathing building?Best wishes Steve.

there was no sun bathing building as far as I am aware but it was designed and terraced for sunbathers (which back then just meant sitting in the sun - and up the top near the crazy golf hundreds of old dears used to sit knitting in the sun enjoying the spectacular view and cooing over my baby brother when I took him out in his pushchair) , the cafe was glass roofed to provide maximum light and an indoor seating area where us frozen kids would go for a horlicks, anywhere set for sunbathing was usually in the form of the 3 foot stonewall windbreaks all around the area as the north sea gives a biting onshore wind - the remaining chalets south of the cliff lift are set up that way. the spa concert area is open to the sky but shielded from the wind. many of the covered seating areas had half walls to shelter behind. what impresses me is the borough engineer responsible for the whole lot north to south knew enough to use concrete to steer the tidal flows and cut the erosion which put amazing stresses on the pool structure. it makes me wonder if all the stone they have been plonking outside the old defences are ill thought out. I read they want to do the same in front of the spa which won't leave a lot of beach. not that so many go there anymore but it still has its moments. I did once get taken into the back areas with the pumps and stuff but will only have been 8 or so don't remember so much.

You are welcome. I was also fascinated by this building when I lived in Scarborough 1997-2000. Just before I left, I borrowed a video camera to film the site, as I suspected it might not be around when I returned, and so it proved to be. The South bay pool had once been one of Scarborough's flagship tourist attractions, and it was tragic to see it derelict, and then destroyed. I was deeply saddened to see so much history lost for ever.

Your a gem mate, I just wished i could of swam in it before it closed,i didnt visit until 1994 ,Wish id appreciated the beauty of it more when i visited.even though the pool was delapadated i walked past but didnt really think of all those people who had swam there,What stories they would tell .Iknow they would be horified at the mess it is now.Thanks again Steve.

Hi Steven, thought you would be interested to know that the high diving board features very briefly in the film A Chorus of Disaproval, which is set in Scarborough. You can see it at kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bKp8ZtSVlsjGpZc.html and the few seconds showing the diving board appear at about 36.16. The significance of this is that the film was released in 1989. Of course the film could have been shot a year or two before its release date, but it certainly suggests the diving board was up much later than 1976. I have never been able to pin down the date of its removal any more specifically.

the high board was there and still in use in 83 we moved to york in 84 but I'd heard they blocked it off soon after though the breadboard was still in use. they chained it off if the weather was bad or they were short on guards. it used to sway in the wind and the concrete was cracking away as the reinforcing bars corroded and expanded to pop it away. same problem you see on motorway flyovers and most old concrete structures.

Hi Steven thanks for that, please let me know anything else you find out. I also read the 'walk of shame account' www.crownspahotel.com/blog/memories-of-scarborough-south-bay-pool/ its great! I would love to collect more stories like this. Maybe there is a book in this!

"council engineers" deemed the Lido at Grange Over Sands as "unsafe and leaking". A local support group paid for an independent structural engineer to do a full site survey, and apart from a few loose roof tiles and some water ingress here and there, the huge outodoor pool itself was found to have no leaks anywhere. Basically the council didn't want to fund it anymore so invented a story about leaking walls and it costing millions to repair.

mainly locals and those advised by the hoteliers, I was one of them aged 7 with my baby brother. probably the only time the water was warm. if you held your ear to the water you could hear people scream as they hit the water after sunbathing. the warmest I remember it was 62 degrees F around 16 celcius. when they painted the 6 foot and shallower bits white it stayed cold.

That's untrue !!

@@purplesunflower8242 Outdoor pools / lidos didn't get used usually from September to April. Thus they relied on good revenue in the 'open season' for maintenance and other running costs even in the 'closed season'. Folk then went abroad on the introduction of cheap foreign holidays which spelled the death knell for such facilities.

@@simongee8928 we loved our lido in St.Annes remember pelting down the huge slides with my family in the 60s councils found money then....?

@@purplesunflower8242 The problem for years now has been financing things. Costs of materials & labour has risen disproportionately and many councils have been obliged to outsource services to meet budget constraints. It's our money they're using, so not much choice really. 😐 That's why do much of what were home produced goods are now made abroad where labour costs are much lower.

@@simongee8928 thank God I was raised in the 50 70 !