Tarlair Swimming Pool

Tarlair Swimming Pool opened in 1931 at the base of a sea cliff just outside Macduff in Banffshire (now Aberdeenshire) in Scotland. This outdoor swimming complex was built in an Art Deco style with a main building backing onto the cliffs and changing rooms to its left hand side. It was commissioned by Macduff Burgh Council in 1929, with the architect being John C Miller, the Burgh Surveyor of MacDuff. The contractor for the project was Robert Morrison & Son of Macduff.[1] Since 2007 it has been protected as a category A listed building. It is considered by Historic Environment Scotland to be the best example of only three surviving outdoor seaside pools in Scotland, the others being at Stonehaven and Gourock.[2]

Picture of the pool in the 1960s

The design of the pool was a clever use of pumped sea water to fill the pools, and flooding of the main pool at high tide to flush out the old water. The main pool had a diving board at the deep end and a child's chute at the shallow end,[3] though both are now missing. The second-largest pool was a boating pool with the two remaining pools being paddling pools.

The complex is now in some disrepair with a mixture of weathering, rock falls and vandalism being the main causes. In 2010, a proposal was put forward for redevelopment of the complex as a lobster hatchery.[4]

In 2012 a small group of local residents in the Macduff community created a "Save Tarlair" page on the social networking site Facebook, which drew the attention of over 7000 followers to the plight of pool complex. A community group "Friends of Tarlair " has since been formed and is working with Aberdeenshire Council to try to find a way forward for the site as a community facility.

It has been announced that £300,000 will be earmarked for the refurbishment of the pools.[5]

Channel 4 television made "Tarlair Outdoor Pool" the subject of the third episode of a series of six documentary films on "Britain's Abandoned Playgrounds". The site also features in the Stuart MacBride novel, "The Missing and the Dead", when a child's body is found in the pool.[6]