Stirling's Lost Swimming Pools

The Edward Road Swimming Pool

Constructed around 1930, The Edward Road Swimming Pool provided the children from the nearby Riverside Primary School with a convenient place to learn to swim. The design included spectators’ galleries and ‘dressing boxes’ with a central ‘swimming pond’. Both buildings were designed by Alexander Nisbet Malcolm, who was then the Stirling Education Authority architect. The Swimming Poll was demolished in 2014 to make way for modern housing but the Primary School still serves the Riverside community.

Nisbet Malcolm was born in Polmont in 1907 and went on to study architecture at Glasgow School of Art whilst working for the architectural firm Clarke & Bell from 1897 to 1902. Clarke & Bell (later Clarke & Bell and R A Bryden and then Clarke & Bell & J H Craigie) was one of Scotland’s leading architectural firms, winning competitions and being commissioned to design buildings such as the Western Baths in Glasgow and Dunoon Pier as well as numerous schools, villas, offices and warehouses.

Nisbet Malcolm was appointed Principal Assistant at Clarke & Bell in 1904 but left the firm in 1908 to establish his own practice in Grangemouth. He served in the Royal Engineers during WW1, and post-war he re-opened his practice in Falkirk where he worked with Thomas Mair Copeland until his appointment as architect for the Stirlingshire Education Authority in 1921. He went on to become Stirlingshire’s County Architect in 1932 and retired in 1943, becoming a Vice-President of the RIAS and president of the Glasgow Institute of Architects in 1945-1946.  He died in 1955 and is buried in Polmont Old Parish Church alongside his parents and his wife Mary Donaldson Louden.

Edward Road Pool Architectural Plans. Courtesy of Stirling Archives

Edward Road Pool Architectural Plans. Courtesy of Stirling Archives

The Provosts Pool

This modern swimming pool was built in 1975 and designed by Ogilvie Group, who are still a major building and engineering firm. In 1983, colourful water slides were added to the exterior of the building and it became known as ‘Rainbow Slides’. A concrete sculpture on one of the exterior walls, by artist Charles Anderson, was saved when the building was closed down and then demolished in 2014 following a campaign by the Twentieth Century Society. The panelled sculpture, which depicts people swimming and diving, had to be cut from the building into panels for relocation, and was then reassembled once it had reached its new home outside the Ogilvie headquarters, where it can still be seen on the Glasgow Road in Bannockburn.

Charles Anderson studied at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1959, and has worked across the UK in a number of mediums for a wide variety of clients including universities, local authorities and banks. Interestingly, he also has a sculpture inside the Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Building (more recently known as the Prudential Building) at Craigforth in Stirling. This building is soon to be demolished but Anderson’s 4-storey high bronze and fibre-glass sculpture, which depicted scenes from Stirling’s history, will be saved. The sculpture will become part of the redeveloped site according to The Ambassador Group who are leading the redevelopment.

Provost Pool Architectural Plans. Courtesy of Stirling Archives