Guest post by Graham Cooksley,
with an introduction by Philip Grant
Public swimming at the Empire Pool, late 1930s. (Wembley History Society collection)
If you read the “Wembley Matters” series about the history
of Wembley Arena, written for its 90th
anniversary in 2024, you will know that it originally included a swimming pool.
It was known as the Empire Pool, and what an amazing pool it was! When it
opened in July 1934, Wembley’s new pool was the largest covered swimming bath
in the world, 200 feet (almost 61 metres) long, 16 feet (almost 5 metres) at
the deep end, and holding 700,000 gallons of heated water. As well as the main
pool, with Europe’s first wave machine, there was a paddling pool for children,
a “fountain pool”, 250 changing rooms and 1,250 lockers.
Advert for the Empire Pool.
(from the back cover of a 1934 British Empire Games
swimming programme)
The pool was
used for public swimming and international competitions in the summer during
the 1930s, but covered over during the winter months for ice hockey matches and
skating, among other sports events. It was last used as a pool for the swimming
and diving competitions, and the water polo finals, at the 1948 Olympic Games.
The finish of a swimming race at the 1948 Olympic Games. (Image from the internet)
But the pool was
not filled in, and still kept the original “temporary” wooden floor over it
until that was replaced with a stronger concrete covering in 1974. Graham
Cooksley, who posts interesting and historic images and stories about the
Stadium and Arena on “X” (formerly Twitter) and Instagram @wembleyarchive1923, recently had a tour of the
former pool, and kindly offered to share the experience with “Wembley Matters”
readers. If you want to know “what lies beneath” the arena floor (not that
horror story), please read on! Graham writes:
Since starting my Wembley Stadium and OVO Arena Wembley collection many
years ago it has, since learning that the old Empire Pool still remained
underneath the floor of the arena, been a long-held desire to view it one day.
In an email correspondence with the Arena team (I write a monthly
heritage blog for their Social Media pages) a cheeky ‘would it be possible to
view the old pool’ request developed over a few weeks into a calendar date for
May 2026 when we would be visiting for a day’s play in the World Table Tennis
World Championships. This Arena visit
was my first since a David Bowie gig back in 2003 so that was good enough, but
to get to see the old pool would be “Christmas day for an eight year-old”
levels of excitement, but for a 57 year-old.
Meeting my contact at the OVO Arena at mid-day, while France v Romania
Ladies was still ongoing, we made our way into the open plan offices where we
met our guide from the estates team.
Hard hats were issued, and a service elevator took us down to the
basement. The underworld of the Arena is
a strange mix of storage including old vending machines, standing as if waiting
to be filled and used, cabling that would rival any underground station, and
runs the entire length of the arena, and horizontal and vertical pipes and
beams which criss-cross each other thus making those hard hats essential.
1. The holes for the wave making machine. (All numbered photos by Graham Cooksley)
First stop on this underworld tour were four cavernous holes in the
floor, these were where the wave making machinery, the first in Britain, were
located. Ladders still take maintenance
teams down to occasionally pump out water that still gathers in areas, probably
due London’s soft clay. Then we approach
the actual swimming tank.
2. Looking towards the deep end, with the ‘A’ frames and their black
sheets.
Bathers 90 years ago would have stepped down into the waters from
poolside changing lockers, whereas we walked into it through various breeches
in the surrounding tank ‘wall’ and given the change of orientation that took
place during the arena’s refurbishment twenty years ago, we are straight into
the deep end. Mezzanine walkways in the
tank are surrounded by strange large ‘A’ frames with stretched black sheets,
these we are told are for sound proofing the underworld during music acts, the
vibrations from which can cause damage to the structure of the building.
3. One of the lamp holes in the side of the swimming pool.
4. The overflow channel (in black) near the top of the pool’s tank.
Lamp holes line the sides of the tank, some are used as cabling through
points while some still retain their ‘glass’ which would have shone so brightly
in those illuminated prewar days. Around
the rim of the tank the water overflow channel remains, just waiting for
someone to grab hold and kick the water once again. On the floor of the deep end is a dust
covered ‘Public Toilets’ sign. How many years has that laid there? I offer it a
good home, but the request is unanswered.
5. The ‘Public Toilets’ sign at the bottom of the pool’s deep end
6. A ‘plug hole’ in one of the concrete floor beams.
Directly above us France and Romania continue their game but we are
directed to view some small round holes in the 1974 concrete floor, our guide
tells us that these are literally plug holes. At the end of an ice season the
machinery would be switched off and the melting water would drain through these
holes and into the swimming tank to be pumped out. One ingenious feature in the existing
concrete floor is / was a network of pipes embedded to freeze water and to form
the rink.
7. Some of the embedded pipes, exposed in a section of the original
floor.
One end of the newly-built Empire Pool in 1934, with a corner water
tower arrowed.
The underworld space gets more limited as the concrete floor above us
gradually meets the pool floor as it shallows out over the length of the
building, but as we leave the underworld there is one last stop to look up into
the interior of one of the four iconic corner towers of the OVO Arena. These are water towers and still have the
pipework inside them and could still work if ever needed. Sadly, our tour ends, it’s been fantastic and
now eight weeks later it was such a privilege, and we are so grateful to the
Arena team for making it happen.
Graham Cooksley.
