Tooting Bec Lido

Lesbian artist Maggi Hambling recalls the lido in the film The Gateways Grind, a documentary reflecting on the famous Gateways Club in Chelsea, which by the 1950s and 60s had become one of London’s best-known lesbian venues. Speaking about her first experiences of lesbian social life, Hambling describes telling new acquaintances that she “worked at Tooting Bec Lido” — not because it was true, but because so many lesbians actually did work there that it felt like an easy way, as a newly out young woman, to signal that she might belong.
Lifeguards, attendants and regular swimmers formed a semi-visible network of queer women who recognised one another and actively sought each other out through shared routines, conversation and flirtation. Pools and leisure sites like this could offer forms of community that were neither secret nor overtly political, allowing queer women to meet in broad daylight within respectable public institutions, while still forming relationships, pursuing desire and building social worlds beyond family and work. For some, employment at the lido also provided independence, steady income and access to lesbian social networks at a time when many women had limited economic freedom.
The lido’s openness and daily rhythms made it possible for queer women to encounter one another repeatedly and to develop friendships, romances and long-term connections without the risks that could follow in bars or more visibly queer venues. Remembered by many as a place of recognition and possibility rather than formal activism or nightlife, Tooting Bec Lido forms part of Wandsworth’s lesbian geography where attraction, community and everyday life overlapped in public space.