Final fundraising push for Cleveland Pools restoration
It is hoped the UK's oldest outdoor swimming pool in Bath will reopen this summer
The team restoring the UK's oldest outdoor swimming pool in Bath need your help to finish the project.
For the past year work has been ongoing to restore Cleveland Pools to its former glory.
The site on the edge of the River Avon first opened for swimming in 1817 but closed in the 1980's and has sat derelict for decades.
It is hoped it will reopen this summer, but the Cleveland Pools Trust which is behind the work still needs to raise around £80,000 in public donations.
We've spoken to Anna Baker who is the project director: "Things have progressed so much in the last year it is unbelievable to see the amount of progress we've made," she told us.
"We're moving really fast now and very much the end is in sight which is really exciting."
The original crescent shaped pool is now getting tiled, with grey tiles unlike the traditional blue that you might expect in a leisure centre.
The idea is that the grey will make the water look more natural and pay tribute to the pool's history of being fed by the river.
A second children's pool will also open in the summer, as will a café with a terrace, but certain things won't be completed as planned if the final amount of money is not raised.
"When projects like this start, people tend to think that they're done in terms of fundraising and that we've got all the money, but it doesn't actually work like that," Anna said.
"We have to keep fundraising really hard to get over the line."
Overall the team still needs to raise around £400,000, £80,000 of which needs to come from public donations.
"We've almost got £60,000 already so it's been really successful so far, but we do need people's help just to get us that final move over the line," Anna said.
There is no suggestion that the site won't reopen without the money, rather that certain plans will have to be shelved if it isn't all received.
"Things like the canopy over the terrace, we might not be able to put that in," Anna said.
"Some of the community work we do might have to get cut.
"We've got quite a lot of interpretation, so story telling about the history of the pools. All of that stuff costs quite a lot but is not an absolute must have to open it.
"It's really detrimental actually, if you don't manage to do those things, to people's visitor experience, but that is inevitably the bit you have to cut because it's not absolutely business critical."
If you want to donate to the Trust you can do so here, but for those that cannot afford to, you can still enter a competition to be one of the first people to swim in the main pool when it opens later this year.
You can enter that competition and read more about Cleveland Pools, on their website.