In at the deep end - a visit to Wembley Arena's former swimming pool.

  

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 90^th 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.