Does This Scottish Castle Possess The First Heated Indoor Swimming Pool?

08 Apr Does This Scottish Castle Possess The First Heated Indoor Swimming Pool?

Could This be the First Heated Indoor Heated Swimming Pool?

From Bute Family

Historians are not necessarily in agreement as to when recorded history tells us the first swimming pools appeared.  Some historians place the records of swimming pools as far as three centuries B.C.  Further advances in technology brought filtration, indoor pools, and chemical treatment for sanitization.  Swimming races were among the original events in the modern olympics which took place in 1896, which helped the popularity of private pools grow from that point.  Indoor pools were also an advance in technology, which history tells us started appearing early in the 19th century in the U.K.  It is to the British Isles that we turn for the subject of this post, which brings a factoid from a website dedicated to a private castle belonging to avery prominent Scottish family.  The Bute Family Estate, located in Scotland, is a Gothic Revival castle that purports to have the first heated indoor swimming pool, which was designed in 1879 and is still in use today.  Could this be the first recorded instance of a heated indoor swimming pool?

Here is an excerpt from the website:

Bute Estate

The Bute Estate – with earliest records dating back to 1400 – is one of Scotland’s oldest estates. Today, the Bute Estate remains an essential part of the very fabric of the Isle of Bute itself.

Mount Stuart

Britain’s finest Victorian Gothic Revival house. Described in 1900 as ‘one of the most magnificent specimens of domestic architecture in existence’, Mount Stuart – both house and grounds – is one of Scotland’s outstanding heritage assets.

In the Victorian era the 3rd Marquess of Bute made Mount Stuart one of the most technologically advanced houses in the world: central heating, telephones and a passenger lift were all domestic firsts in Scotland. It was the first house in the UK to be purpose built with electric light and the indoor heated swimming pool, designed in 1879 and still in use today, is believed to be the first of its kind in the World.

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