The swimming pond has become a contemporary garden design staple and though styles differ, the principle is consistent: mini-ecosystems of plants and micro-organisms in shallower ‘regeneration zones’ to purify a deeper pool. With no chemicals required, swimming ponds are relatively low-maintenance and eco-friendly, not to mention aesthetically pleasing.
Swimming ponds mark a turn away from the turquoise, chlorine-treated pools that remained fashionable for decades from the 1930s onwards. They also echo the spring-fed plunge pools of 18th-century estates such as Painswick in Gloucestershire — linked, in their day, with a wide array of health benefits.
As a cultural historian who studies freshwater bathing, I’ve been piecing together another, overlooked chapter in this story that chimes with present-day ideals: the Arts-and- Crafts inspired naturalistic bathing areas, especially popular between the Victorian era and 1920s, that blurred the line between ornament and recreation.
As I have sifted through archives, memoirs and newspapers, sharing notes with architects and garden historians, a fresh picture has emerged of the home-bathing habits of Victorian and Edwardian people. They desired, to borrow William Morris’s evocative phrase, to ‘wash the night off’ in garden pools that trod a thin, thin line between formal design and embracing nature.
Great Ambrook
Arthur Smith Graham’s Italian garden at Great Ambrook, Devon, features a walled garden where, in one corner, a colonnaded pool looks out over the surrounding fields. Garden Museum director Christopher Woodward describes the pool as small, but deep, and ‘definitely celebrating the act of swimming in its design.’
Standen
The National Trust gardens at Standen, West Sussex, include an 1890s pool by Art-and-Crafts architect Philip Webb. Webb grew up in Oxford, where he swam with William Morris at Parson’s Pleasure, and travelled through Iceland, which might have influenced the Standen pool’s rough-hewn style.
Rayne Thatch
Located on the outskirts of Bristol, opposite his more imposing dwelling, was tobacco magnate Walter Melville Wills’s rustic ‘playhouse’ Rayne Thatch. It included, like Aldenham, a swimming pool by James Pulham and Son. Rayne Thatch is still a private residence.
Millthorpe Brooke
Humblest in this list is utopian polymath Edward Carpenter’s garden pool at Millthorpe, in Derbyshire. Next to a stream ‘full of music and grace,’ Carpenter erected a hut that served as both a study and ‘bathing shelter’. Here, he swam and penned several works over the course of four decades, whatever the weather.
Hidcote Manor
Lawrence Johnston, owner and architect of Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire, designed Hidcote’s pool before the First World War. Back then, gardeners regularly drained and cleaned it, and dyed the water blue. An army major’s daughters often visited from nearby Kiftsgate Court, accompanied by a chaperone, taking summer morning dips in the pool.
Valewood Farm
As at Hidcote, Oliver Hill dyed his stylish elliptical pool at Valewood Farm, Sussex, azure blue — pre-empting what was to come. ‘This azure theme was carried through the garden,’ notes writer and former Country Life Gardens Editor Kathryn Bradley-Hole, ‘with blue-glazed Spanish pots of varied shapes placed carefully around the pool, at doorways and within the loggias.’
Aldenham House
The swimming pool at Aldenham House in Hertfordshire was converted from a fish pond and featured rock works by James Pulham and Son, constructed out of Pulham’s signature ‘Pulhamite’ artificial stone. The grotto was repurposed as an air raid shelter during the Second World War.
Stoneywell Cottage
Leading Arts-and-Crafts garden designer and former Country Life gardens Editor Gertrude Jekyll admired the rough simplicity of Ernest Gimson’s bathing pool at Stoneywell Cottage, Leicestershire.
Once upon a time, the house had no bathroom and so the pool was a summer alternative to winter’s indoor jug and basin. Stoneywell is open to the public through the National Trust.
Lindridge House
The 1920s ‘swimming bath’ at Lindridge House, Devon, replaced a pond, boathouse and footbridge, and was a sign of things to come. The fact that it was so long (50 metres) and the diving board reflected a growing passion for swimming as an athletic pursuit. Historian and Country Life writer Christopher Hussey called its design ‘admirably clean’.
The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. An additional 50,000 assets from the historic archive are scheduled to be added this year — with completion expected in Summer 2025. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here
-
Allerton Castle: The great country house that blends Hampton Court, Highclere and the Palace of WestminsterA disastrous fire in 2005 prompted the rebirth of Allerton Castle, North Yorkshire, an outstanding Victorian house with a deep and remarkable history. Photographs by Paul Highnam.
-
Portmore has it all: A 3,459-acre Scottish estate for sale, with a signature Baronial sandstone mansion at its heartFor sale for the first time in 40 years, Portmore Estate is everything you could ever want in Scotland.
-
Ballynure House: The magical estate that transformed its bramble-covered historic garden into a pollinator paradiseWhere brambles once engulfed the historic gardens at Ballynure House in Co Wicklow, Ireland — home of Clare Reid Scott — colourful flower borders now hum with pollinators. Photographs by Jonathan Hession.
-
Defanging the Gardens Trust will hurt our most precious landscapesThe Government has proposed to remove the Garden Trust's position as a statutory consultee in planning permissions for up to 1,700 historic landscapes and gardens in order to speed up building.
-
‘I was rather excited, not remotely daunted... With hindsight, I should have been': The 25-year creation of the gardens of Glenarm CastlePay a visit to the gardens at Glenarm Castle in Co Antrim — home of Randal and Aurora McDonnell — is hard to credit that nearly all of the present garden was made this century, marvels Kathryn Bradley-Hole. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
-
The pinnacle of the English style of gardening, as fine today as it was a century agoCharles Quest-Ritson has just returned to Great Dixter for the first time in years — and it's 'the high point of all my garden visiting for a long time. I cannot recommend it too highly'.
-
The curious incident of the vanishing glasshouses: Country Life's photographs are all that remains of these awe-inspiring structuresThe ‘winter garden’ and the ‘terraced grounds of exquisite beauty’ were two of Cherkley Court’s featured attractions. They were advertised for sale in Country Life in 1910 — and then they vanished.
-
Eat up your daylilies: The underappreciated east Asian flower that's a marvel in the kitchenMark Diacono was at first suspicious of cutting the stem of a gorgeous red daylily, until he realised how delicious they are.
-
'Knoll offers a masterclass in the adaptability of grass': The Dorset garden that went from tourist attraction to specialist nurseryTilly Ware visits Knoll Gardens in Dorset, which offers a masterclass in grasses and how to make your garden stay beautiful for longer.
-
'Each one is like a coral reef in an agricultural desert': One man's mission to rewild the swimming poolAt a fraction of the cost of a traditional pool, David Pagan Butler’s pioneering organic alternative has a global fanbase and he’s on a mission to share his knowledge.
