Stoke Bathing Place was an outdoor swimming venue in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

Location and features

During the 1830s, the Ipswich Wet Dock was being constructed. This caused the closure of Ipswich's three swimming venues (one was near St Cement's, the second was next to St Mary-At-The Quay and the third not far from

Stoke Bridge Stoke Bridge in Ipswich carries Bridge Street ( A137) over the point at which the River Gipping becomes the River Orwell. It carries traffic into Ipswich from the suburb of Over Stoke. The bridge consists of two separate structures and is ju ...

). The replacement was Stoke Bathing Place, which was an enclosed area within the West Bank of the

River Orwell The River Orwell flows through the county of Suffolk in England from Ipswich to Felixstowe. Above Ipswich, the river is known as the River Gipping, but its name changes to the Orwell at Stoke Bridge, about half a mile below where the river beco ...

. It had an estimated size of 90x30m. The bathing pool was refreshed by tidal waters. The bathing area is shown as early as 1896 on a maps of Ipswich and also from 1908 and up to 1973. In photos from 1908, white changing cabins and diving jetties were present. Stoke Bathing Place were extensively damaged during the Ipswich Floods of 1953 but the other outside bathing venues were already open for use ( Broomhill Pool and Piper's Vale).

WWI Zeppelin raid

On the 1st of April 1913, during the

Zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155� ...

raids of

WWI World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting took place mainly in Europe and th ...

, L-15, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Joachim Breithaupt, dropped a two bombs toward the dock areas. One of the bombs landed on the site of the Stoke Bathing Place where two were killed and one injured.

References

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