The Jubilee Pool in Penzance is enjoying a well-deserved revival! This wonderful Art Deco lido was designed and built in the early 1930s, opening in May 1935 to celebrate King George V’s Silver Jubilee. Its elegant design fits perfectly into the sweeping seafront at one end of Penzance’s popular promenade and from the time of its opening the pool quickly became a valued part of community life in the town. Sadly however by the early 2000s hundreds of winter storms had begun to take their toll and the pool was in a serious state of disrepair. There were even rumours that it would have to close.
Geothermal heated pool winter swimming
Fortunately it was taken over from Cornwall Council as a community run project in 2017 and since then, after much hard work and fundraising Jubilee Pool has gone from strength to strength. With swimming all year round, summer art exhibitions and a bustling café it seems as if the future of the pool was assured and now with the amazing addition of a geothermally heated pool winter swimming is open to all, not just the extremely hardy!
The idea of tapping into this green resource deep beneath the ground in Cornwall and heating the pool was first mooted back in 2010 and the unique project was finally completed in 2020. It is the first geothermal lido in the UK and astonishingly swimmers can enjoy bathing outside in water heated to about 32 degrees.
The system works by extracting warm water from a geothermal well around 410m deep – the height of one and a half Eiffel Towers! The heat is taken out of that water using heat pumps and then distributed to the sea water in the pool via a heat exchanger before finally the cooler water is injected back into the ground and the process starts again. This innovative system means that the balmy temperature of the pool can be sustained with a very low carbon footprint making the whole project environmentally friendly as well as delightful!
Jubilee Pool really has found a new lease of life and if you fancy trying the geothermal pool for yourself book a slot online and experience the joy of swimming in a heated outside pool this winter! You can even book a ‘Geo & Fizz’ evening in December which allows you to sip a glass of bubbly while lounging in the warm water under a blanket of stars.
