Kingswinford - Kingfisher Lido and The Stewponey Pool

Apart from the childhood memories of learning to swim here, I enjoyed the fun of camping for weeks on end in the field which lay adjacent to this lovely lido.
The following information has travelled from West Midlands to Adelaide - Australia, London - England, and found me in Reading!

Quarry Bank resident Claude Harris, now aged 77 years, said he and his family had many fond memories of travelling to the lido and said for many people it was almost a trip to the seaside.
“In those days it was very different as many people did not have cars and no buses ran directly to the lido Stourton”, he said.
“In many ways it was like going on holiday. You had to plan the trip carefully and make sure you knew the times of the last buses so you could not be stranded many miles from home. Hundreds of people would go down during the warmer months and it really did have the atmosphere of going to the seaside. Our children Richard and Jackie absolutely loved it.” Claude’s wife Betty said they would prepare a picnic before setting off which gave the day an extra special touch.

“There would be so much excitement and you could pick out the other families heading for the lido.,” she said. “You had to set out early in the morning to get all the buses but it added to the spirit of the day. The only trouble was that many of the children wanted to leave at the end of the day. There were certainly some tears.”
Both Mr and Mrs Harris said they had been upset when the lido had been destroyed to make way for
new housing. “It is another little bit of shared history which has been chipped away. Things like the lido will never come again, you cannot recapture what those pools gave to the community,” said Mrs Harris. After the Stewponey closed, families moved further up the A449 to the Kingfisher Lido. The Kingfisher Golf and Counrty Club is now based at the site of the Lido which has long been demolished and replaced with a new indoor facilitiy. It had also been a very popular site but over the years had gone the same way as other lidos of its kind. My thanks to the “Express and Star” Wolverhampton

One of the most famous pools in the Black Country was the Stewponey Lido,which was visited by hundreds of people every year for almost three decades.It was provided for the people of Stourton and Kinver and provided a facility for youngsters to have fun and swim with their friends.

It remained popular until the late 1960’s when the axe fell on the site.
It was empty and disused until the early 2000’s when the pool was filled in, and the outer aspects demolished to make way for a new housing estate.

Long before the days of Leisure Centres, the Black Country residents looking to cool off during the summer could take a dip at outdoor swimming pools scattered around the region.
Many of the pools, including main sites in Stourbridge, Stourton and Kingswinford have since been lost - but the memories held by those who used them remains strong.
The pools were hotspots for families to visit, with their outdoor benches and tables offering a taste of the seaside on people’s days out . See acknowledgements