Grantham's original Leisure Centre

Grantham Leisure Centre, Union Street in 1986. It was built in the 1970s and demolished in the early 1990s to make way for Asda. A replacement was built at the Meres, Trent Road.

When work began on a swimming pool on Union Street in 1970, the people of Grantham did something unusual – they helped pay for it themselves.

The Quincentenary Swimming Pool, named to mark the town’s 500th anniversary celebrations of the early 1960s, was partly funded through a public “Buy a Brick” campaign that asked residents to contribute directly to the cost of building it.

The pool served the town through the 1970s, and in 1981 it became the heart of a brand new leisure centre built around it at a cost of £1 million – replacing outdoor pools that had previously served swimmers in the town’s parks.

But the complex was short-lived. Within around a decade, the entire site was earmarked for redevelopment, and the leisure centre was demolished to make way for the Asda superstore that stands there today. Asda did, however, fund a replacement – the leisure centre on Trent Road – and swimming provision eventually moved to the Meres Leisure Centre, which opened in 1998.