Abandoned Welsh lido once ‘at heart of valley life’ revisited in new video

A long-abandoned outdoor pool in the Welsh valleys has been brought back into the spotlight after a travel vlogger explored the site.

Content creator Kurt Roberts from Abertillery visited Troedyrhiw lido in Merthyr Tydfil and captured footage of the long-abandoned site.

Once thriving, the lido, hidden on a hillside above the village, has been out of use since 1964 and is currently in a state of disrepair.

The 21-metre-long, 13-metre-wide swimming pool has become a popular spot for those interested in urban exploration and local history.

Kurt, who goes by @kurtvanlife on social media, travels in his 1970s Volkswagen Beetle and has garnered 9k followers on TikTok and 5k subscribers on YouTube with content from across Wales and the world.

Kurt’s social media presence received a great deal of interest in 2025 after he reunited a 60-year-old woman with her holiday footage from four decades earlier that he had found in a car-boot sale.

However, the majority of his posts focus on urban exploration and casting light on forgotten and abandoned places.

He recently visited the Troedyrhiw lido to share some footage and explain its significance to local people throughout the 20th century.

In the video posted to Kurt’s Facebook page at the beginning of May, the creator explains: “Places like this wouldn’t have just been a swimming pool.

“It would have been an escape for the hard graft that it was working down the coal mine.”

In fact, the lido was constructed during a time of high unemployment in the area by out-of-work miners and funded by Patrick Wyndham Murray Threipland and his wife Eleanor.

The lido opened on 25 August 1934, and a newspaper article from the Merthyr Express published after explained that the year “was not a prosperous one for the people of South Wales.”

It was hoped the lido would bring some much-needed joy to the community and, supervised by Evan Morgan, “the men of the village wielded picks and shovels voluntarily”, with all materials provided by Mr Threipland.

Kurt added: “You can just imagine this place being fairly busy and, you know, it ain’t the biggest swimming pools but when you grow up in the valleys and there isn’t much you just take what you can…

“[It] quickly became the heart of the community during the summer months. Families would gather, kids would spend hours in the water, and it was a place full of life, laughter, and memories.”

People from the local community and further afield could bathe for free at the lido or sunbathe on the surrounding banks, which was managed by the Troedyrhiw Bathing Pool Committee in the years after opening.

However, according to Coflein, vandalism damaged the lido with stories passed down through the Threipland family that this was caused by local youths rolling boulders from the hillside into the bathing pool.

By 1964, the lido was damaged to such an extent that the site ceased to be used, and its pool and pavilion with male and female changing rooms have stood abandoned since.

Kurt added: “Despite its current state, you can still feel the echoes of what it used to be… a place where summers felt endless.

“There’s something strangely captivating about places like this. A reminder of how quickly things can change, and how much history can be hidden in plain sight.”

Many local people took to the comments to share memories of those endless summers, writing “My sister used to swim there with the girl guides in the 1940s”, and “To the left of it was the (Little) mountain where we used to slide down in cardboard until my father made me a sleigh with candle grease on the rudders. A lovely childhood.”

Another added that there have been “whispers of it being overhauled and brought back to life,” but no official plans to clear up or reopen the site have been lodged.

To see more content from Kurt Roberts, follow his Facebook and YouTube here.