The Hampstead Ponds or Highgate Ponds are three large freshwater swimming ponds — two designated single sex, and one for mixed bathing — fed by the headwater springs of the River Fleet — in Hampstead Heath, North London, England. The swimming ponds are three out of some 30 ponds on Hampstead Heath.
They were originally dug in the 17th and 18th centuries as reservoirs. A malarial marsh was drained by the Hampstead Water Company in 1777 to meet London's growing water demand.
In 2004, the City of London Corporation, which holds the Heath in trust, since the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1986, tried to close the ponds on the grounds that they were an unsustainable drain on their expenses and posed a health risk to swimmers. The swimmers challenged this and won a victory in the High Court. To defray costs, the Corporation introduced a charge for admission of £2 per session, £1 for concessions. There was some opposition to this on the grounds that swimming there had been free since at least the 1920s, and some ticket machines were vandalised.
Read more about Hampstead Ponds: Swimming Ponds, Location
Famous quotes containing the word ponds:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)