Jubilee Pool

One Penzance councillor saw a choice between building a swimming pool and improving the town’s water supply. Another predicted Captain Frank Latham’s proposal would become “the biggest white elephant Penzance has ever had.” They were spectacularly wrong.

Opened on 31 May 1935 as part of King George V’s Silver Jubilee celebrations, Jubilee Pool became the UK’s largest seawater pool. Its five million litres could accommodate around 600 swimmers, all contained within a 300-foot-long triangle of concrete curving around Battery Rocks. Latham designed the pool to follow the existing shoreline rather than fight it, producing an unusual streamlined shape capable of absorbing the full force of the Cornish sea.

That force nearly won in 2014, when winter storms caused extensive structural damage. The pool reopened after a major restoration and was transferred into community operation in 2017. Three years later, part of the lido became the UK’s first geothermally heated seawater pool, using warmth drawn from a well drilled 410 metres into the rock below. Nearly a century after locals dismissed it as a white elephant, Penzance’s concrete beach now keeps a section of the Atlantic at a comfortable 28 to 30 degrees.