Homes: Britain's lidos make a splash

Halfway along the coast road between Brighton and Newhaven, where the South Downs slope into the Channel, an ageing bobby-dazzler is looking for love. It is hard not to fall for a building that seems so obviously to be out for a hug.

Saltdean is Britain's most striking lido: the arms of its pavilion sweep gently around you in a cream, art deco embrace. It's cradled in the lee of a valley, sheltered from the breeze. You instinctively want to dive into the asymmetric pool; to feel that shock as the water pricks your skin; to see sunlight dreamily refracted through the surface; to taste the tang of chlorine, and hear the giddy shrieks of splashing swimmers.

On 2 May 1938, Saltdean – designed by Richard Jones with an echo of the De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill – opened with a flourish. Evelyn George was there as an 18-year-old, though she missed the main event. "I was in the first two weeks of training as a nurse. I got there at six o'clock as they were taking the banners down," she remembers. She had cycled over from Brighton. "It had opened at two or three, I think. I was disappointed to miss it. I had an ice-cream in the rotunda," she chuckles, "then wandered off to the pictures."

Today, Saltdean needs some TLC. The village – to which Evelyn eventually moved – has rallied round to save its prized possession.

"We're having a fundraising ball at the Brighton Grand in October at which the restoration plans (by Conran + Partners' architects) will be on display," says Deryck Chester, who is helping to save the lido and raise the £9.8m needed for the renovations.

Across Britain, lidos are reopening – in Pontypridd, Bristol and Reading, with more planned. They evoke powerful emotions. The people I speak to often return to happy memories of childhood, the shivery pleasures of larking in lidos when they were younger. "I used to swim at Saltdean as a kid, and spent many long summer days hanging out with friends," Chester says. "Even then, I thought there was something special about its architecture."

Lidos were a sybaritic reaction to the buttoned-up bashfulness of Victorian Britain. They cut against our national grumpiness and laziness. They were reckless and daring pieces of architecture for reckless and daring pursuits – in its own way, flashing flesh was as dangerous as diving. The shapes of the best 30s lidos evoke speed and movement, health and efficiency. The tight curves of Saltdean allude to human bodies tightened to perfection by 50 lengths. Lidos are unbritish – they trick us into thinking we are somewhere more relaxed, more Italian.

I arrive at Brockwell Lido with the skewed fairground sounds of Darren Hayman's song Brockwell Park spluttering merrily in my ears. "Lidos represent a simpler, more generous time," says Hayman, who was in the 90s indie band Hefner. He wrote an entire album about lidos in 2012, with tracks dedicated to Saltdean, Tooting Bec and King's Meadow in Reading. "Why wouldn't we have outdoor swimming pools run by local councils?"

Brockwell was built in 1937 for London County Council by Harry Rowbotham and TL Smithson, who designed several others across the capital. These were acts of municipal beneficence that would be anathema in today's more cynical world. Lidos became ubiquitous: there were more than 160 in Britain; Leicester alone had eight.

It is a mild evening in south London and the last swimmers have packed up. The calm waters of the empty lido are serene. By day it becomes an urban oasis, a bustle was documented in Lucy Blakstad's beautiful film Lido, from BBC2's Modern Times strand, which depicted multicultural Brockwell in summer 1995. "Brockwell Lido is a community," agrees novelist Stella Duffy, a regular swimmer. "I set a short story, To Brixton Beach, there." Brockwell's brick buildings are more modest than Saltdean's voluptuous glamour. Some of Herne Hill's homeless perch on the steps outside. "Even though I'm here every day of the week, it's my favourite place in London," says Dan Edwards, owner of Brockwell's Lido Cafe. "You're down to a swimming costume just like everyone else. It's a great leveller."

Lidos, like many aspects of British culture, are intoxicating when it's sunny – and more niche when it's not. Some aficionados, such as architect Claire Truman, welcome rain. "My most memorable swim was on a summer evening at Hinksey Pool in Oxford," she tells me. "It started raining and a calm came over the empty pool." She loves King's Meadow's "beautiful polychromatic brick building, with its elegant cast-iron colonnade".

King's Meadow was lucky. "As a kid, I went to Trentham Gardens lido in Stoke-on-Trent," remembers house restorer Phil Bradby. "It was a curvaceous art deco pool, accessed through the woods on a miniature railway. Years later I went back – and found crushed concrete and broken glass in fresh digger tracks. I was heartbroken." Bradby is currently set on rebuilding Grange-over-Sands Lido in Cumbria.

Nature can wreak its own havoc, too: Penzance's triangular 1935 Jubilee pool, for example, was battered in the February storms and hasn't opened this summer.

But, on balmy afternoons, restored lidos such as Peterborough, Sandford Parks in Cheltenham, and London Fields ring with noise. Even on frosty mornings, dedicated swimmers still dive in. "Having a lido transformed my world," says London Fields regular Lisa Penny. "On a bright, sunny day, I feel as if I'm swimming in a David Hockney painting."