Imagine this extravagance if you can. At the height of industry in a time before the Clean Air Act was introduced: Smallthorne and Burslem skies filled with cloaks of black smoke and with choking dust trapped between Sneyd Colliery, Bellerton Colliery and the ironworks, not to mention the thousands of potbank chimneys spewing anthracite-black smoke into the atmosphere. Get the picture? 

And so, what do the colliery owners do? Well they enterprisingly build a state of the art open air swimming pool with sun-bathing sections and underwater observation chambers. Now that’s innovation for you – or is it folly; for within a few months the pool was shut down, something to do with subsidence they said at the time as swimming pool water began seeping away. And perhaps it might have had something to do with swimmers coming from the water dirtier than when they plunged in. 

Nowadays the roundabout gardens have been removed to accommodate traffic. Gone also are the astonishing open-air swimming baths that stood on land now occupied by a petrol filling station and a gastro-pub. 

 “It was a wonderful building with art deco features that occupied the whole position from Moorland Road to Sneyd Hill where the boiler-room and pumping house stood. You could hear the rumble of water being heated so the temperature could be maintained all year round. 

At the back you could get a good view of the sun terraces where people would lounge under reflective glass in the shade away from the wind and weather. The terraces were semi-circular and edged with a glass wall rising to thirty-feet. These terraces were tiled and could accommodate 2,000 spectators. The pool was made to Olympic proportions with international diving boards. And beneath the level of water was a restaurant with windows through which diners could watch the swimmers from observation chambers."