Michaela Ridgway on the iconic seaside building.
There’s a salty tang in the air and the sun is out. I hop on the No. 27 bus and climb to the upper deck. After an embarrassing overshoot on my reconnaissance trip the day before (when I nearly ended up in Peacehaven), I carefully note each stop along the coastal road. Paston Place. Roedean School. Greenways. The Windmill. A stiff breeze urges short, frothy waves to the shore at diagonals. Newlands Road. Chichester Drive West. Longridge Avenue; this is it, there’s Saltdean Lido – the iconic Art Deco building and crescent-shaped swimming pool inspired by Hollywood, transatlantic ocean liners, and Californian beach resorts – nestled in a dip between the Downs and the sea.
A hundred years before I disembarked at Longridge Avenue bus stop, visionary property developer Charles Neville bought land east of Brighton to build his new seaside resort. Needing an edge (seaside resorts were popping up across the UK) he commissioned his favourite architect, Richard William Herbert Jones, to design a showstopper centrepiece to lure the crowds. Completed in 1938, the Lido’s sky-blue trimmings, sleek white lines, swooping curves, ‘decks’, and cylindrical funnel were designed to evoke the luxurious ocean liners criss-crossing the globe at the time. It did the trick. People flocked here to splash about in the heated outdoor pool, escape the squalor of inner-city life, and, perhaps, imagine different lives for themselves – all for just sixpence, so affordable for working-class families.
Is it a long e or a long i? I roll both pronunciations over in my mind, in the same way I have to when ordering my latte a bit later (the flat a in ‘hat’ or elongated ‘aaah’) at Whitecliffs café, which is just a short walk through a tunnel painted with seashells and sea creatures under the busy A259 to the beach. I bump into my friend Imogen, who is there for a wake. It’s a lucky encounter. “Lido is the Italian word for beach,” she tells me. “It’s pronounced ‘Leedo.’”…