87942

 

II  

Interim Protection  

 

 

Wrexham Waterworld Leisure & Activity Centre  

 

Wrexham  

Acton  

Wrexham  

 

333773  

350513  

N  

Part of Wrexham civic centre, directly south of County Court on corner beside roundabout between Bodhyfryd (A5152) and Holt Street, with large car park and Royal Welch Fusiliers Memorial to its west.  

Recreational  

Modern  

Public swimming pool and leisure centre constructed 1967-1970 by brothers Frederick D Williamson (architect) and Gerald A Williamson (engineer) of Porthcawl. The estimated cost was £400,000 paid by Wrexham Corporation using a loan from the Welsh Office. Wrexham’s first indoor public baths were established in a converted brewery building on Tuttle Street in 1901. By the mid-1950s Alderman Will Dodman was proposing a new pool large enough to host sporting events and cope with growing demand due to the ongoing “baby boom” and rapid population growth in Wrexham. In 1960 the Wolfenden Committee on Sport and the Community recommended central government play a more active role in building indoor sports facilities, especially indoor swimming pools, ideas which were taken up as part of Labour’s successful 1964 general election campaign. The first fruit of the new policy in Wales was the Afan Lido indoor pool and leisure centre in Port Talbot opened 1965, and Wrexham employed the same architects for its project after they proposed a design that was “exciting, different and modern”. The hyperbolic-paraboloid or ‘hypar’ shape (a double curve resembling a horse’s saddle) was first used in architecture in France and Italy in the 1930s to roof military and industrial facilities and was found to have great structural strength despite being thin and lightweight. In the 1950s architects Felix Candelas and Eduardo Catalano did much to popularise the hypar beginning in Mexico and the USA respectively, and the early postwar decades saw hypar roofs applied to houses, sports stadia and places of worship. The Williamson brothers’ New Wrexham Baths was one of the earliest applications of a hypar roof to an indoor swimming pool, and was amongst the largest hypars built in the twentieth century. The baths were built with a competition sized main pool, a diving pool and a learner pool. Unusually the main pool has two shallow ends and a deep middle to make it as welcoming to children and learner swimmers as possible, something Wrexham councillors insisted on over objections from Wrexham Swimming Club. Engineering difficulties relating to the roof delayed completion of the building, which opened to the public on 15 May 1970 with the first ticket sold to 18-year-old Gareth Williams of Rhosddu. Besides swimming the baths also offered saunas, a sweet shop, a ladies’ hairdressers, a launderette, and a television room. A fortnight later the first large event hosted was a Celtic Countries Swimming Contest organised by the Welsh Swimming Association with athletes from Wales, Scotland and Ireland competing. By the official opening on 17 September the baths had reportedly been used by 100,000 swimmers including 14,000 children. In the late 1990s the building was closed for refurbishment work with a foyer extension and staircases added to its west-corner, and the concrete diving boards replaced by a slide, rapids and a jacuzzi. Fixed spectator seating was also installed at this time. The baths were renamed ‘Waterworld’ and reopened by Queen Elizabeth II on 6 March 1998.  

Diamond shaped in plan with black brick plinth level (‘Darstone’ bricks made in Wrexham) and glazed and panelled curtain walls separated by concrete columns or “mullions” under concrete shell hyberbolic paraboloid (hypar) roof. The roof covers an area in plan of 154 feet by 154 feet with its high corners to the east and west 52 feet above the low corners to the north and south. Its weight rests on the low corners which are supported on ‘T’ shaped concrete abutment walls and are attached to concrete tie beams that are continuous with the first-floor pool level projecting from the envelope of the building. Beyond the low corners are freestanding square concrete rain-water catchers. East corner is a fully glazed curve from the plinth to the roof where it joins a clerestory around the whole building. Concrete walls to sides with panelled cladding. Horizontal slit three-pane windows flank the main light with five either side at first floor level and three either side a level above. Covered porch staff entrances in plinth to either side of glazed corner. West corner facing the car park retains high level panel glazing linking to the clerestory but the original pattern of glazing and concrete bands was lost when a stepped extension to the reception area was added in 1997. Beyond this on southwest side is a slope down to vehicle door access to the plant room. Four surviving original windows corresponding to the upper lights on the east sides, paired to either side of the west corner.  

Principal space is the pool hall at first floor level, with main pool, learner’s pool and pleasure pool area (originally the diving pool, now compartmentalised into water slide, rapids and central jacuzzi). The main pool’s measurements were given at construction as being 42 feet wide (matching the length of the learner pool) and 33 1/3 meters length. The pool has two shallow ends and is deepest at its middle. The hypar roof sweeps low over the learner pool at the north corner and one of the shallow ends of the main pool at the south corner to create spaces for swimming lessons, with its high glazed corners over the former diving area to the east and the spectators’ area to the west, giving a grander space for large sporting events. Ground floor reception, café, gymnasium and staff office areas are substantially modernised. Plant room has its main area directly below the learner’s pool and extends between and around the unaltered concrete basins for the main pool and diving pool (as was).  

Included notwithstanding 1997 refurbishments for special architectural and historic interest as the key surviving example of an indoor swimming pool of the post-war period in Wales. It displays technological innovation and virtuosity as the first hyperbolic paraboloid roof in Wales, built on a scale that far exceeded any of its UK predecessors. It applies this bold structural form to what is effectively a new building type: it is a pioneering example of a post-war facility with a focus on leisure rather than purely sport. It makes a distinctive contribution to the development of an architecture for leisure in the post-war period. Its design reflects the booming demographics and technological optimism of Wales in the late 1960s. The west side extensions of 1997 are not of special architectural or historic interest. This structure has been afforded Interim Protection under the Planning (Listed Building and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. It is an offence to damage this structure and you may be prosecuted. To find out more about Interim Protection, please visit the statutory notices page on the Cadw website. For further information about this structure, or to report any damage please contact Cadw.