Wentworth Woodhouse: Pool at stately home where hundreds of villagers learnt to swim is demolished

The pool at Wentworth Woodhouse – built during the stately home’s era as the Lady Mabel teaching college for PE teachers in the 1970s – was state of the art in its day.

But having fallen into dereliction and become a risk site, this week it was demolished to further ambitious plans for the stately home near Rotherham.

A car park will be created on the old site to welcome thousands of visitors each year to the estate which is currently undergoing an extensive restoration.

But there was time before the demolition crew came in for a walk down memory lane for those whose lives had been shaped by hours at the swimming pool.

Jean Ryans was the full time swimming instructor and lifeguard at the pool between 1977 and 1980 when it was leased to Sheffield Polytechnic.

She taught hundreds to swim – and even married one of the sports degree students she met on site.

“I didn’t have a whistle or a megaphone, but I certainly made myself understood,” she said. “When the pool occasionally got drained for cleaning, it was my job to get in there and scrub every tile before it could be refilled. It was so exhausting, I got my mum to come and help me.”

Former Rotherham United goalkeeper Ray Mountford also shared happy memories of using the pool while training on the estate. He said: “We revelled in the beautiful, peaceful surroundings. It made us feel a bit more special and I’m sure contributed to our mindset. We practised on football pitches next to the student accommodation block and ran in the grounds.

“After these gruelling training sessions in the hot July sun, a few of us, including Gerry Forrest, arguably Rotherham’s best ever right full-back, headed to the pool to relax, cool down and talk about the coming season.

“This was long before today’s ice baths, personal massages and the like. We usually had the pool to ourselves and felt quite privileged in those auspicious surroundings.”

But Sarah McLeod, chief executive of the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, explained there was no possibility of a future for the pool on site.

She said: “It was completely derelict, riddled with asbestos and frankly dangerous.

"The swimming pool was full of really thick slime. It wasn’t a case of restoring it.

"For us, the best possible option was to take the building down because we do need car parking on this site. There’s a real challenge for historic villages like Wentworth – it wasn’t built for cars.

"We’re not interested in wiping out histories of the past, though. We will still be telling those stories of the Lady Mabellers.”