Tucked into the greenery of Coate Water Country Park in Wiltshire stands a majestic, angular relic of a bygone era, the Art Deco diving platform designed by J.B.L. Thompson in 1935. For decades, it served as a monument to leisure, skill, and summer joy. Today, though beautifully restored and structurally sound, it stands alone in silence, its purpose stripped away. We’ve saved the body, but lost the soul.
The tower is now Grade II listed, an accolade that rightly honours its rare architectural style and engineering pedigree. Restoration work in recent years has seen the concrete cleaned, damaged sections repaired, and replica railings installed. It gleams proudly above the lake once again. It’s been “brought back to life”, but not in the way it was meant to live.
That’s where the bittersweet irony begins.
We should be celebrating the fact that this incredible piece of interwar design still exists at all. Many such platforms have vanished, demolished or crumbled from disuse. Yet one can’t help but feel that by freezing it in time, we’ve robbed it of its original identity. This wasn’t conceived as a sculpture or a monument, it was built to launch people into water with laughter, fear, freedom, and flair.
Of course, there are valid reasons swimming was banned back in 1958: health, safety, water quality, and liability. And these concerns haven’t gone away. But should that be the end of the story?
Surely, in a time of floating pools, filtered open-water zones, and smart safety technology, we could reimagine how the platform might return to use. A controlled swimming zone, seasonal lifeguards, environmental monitoring, these are solvable challenges, not immovable obstacles. Is the greater risk that someone might dive, or that an entire generation never understands what this thing was really for?
There’s a broader question hiding here too: do our conservation instincts sometimes sanitise history instead of celebrating it? Are we too quick to entomb adventure behind plaques and planning restrictions?
We mustn’t forget that J.B.L. Thompson didn’t build a shrine. He built a stage.
And perhaps one day, when the stars align between heritage, health, and community will, Coate Water’s platform might rise again, not just in concrete, but in spirit. Until then, we can admire it, photograph it, honour it... but we cannot use it. And that, for all its gleaming rails and concrete polish, is a quiet kind of shame.
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