Looks like we missed our chance to become the Streatham Common Outdoor Ice Rink. Maybe another time, if anyone knows an insurance company that would be up for it?

Huge thanks to everyone who came to our 💦💦 Doggy Splash Days 💦💦, and made them such a success. More details, photos and videos to follow, but first here are some amazing photos taken at Splash Day 1 and kindly donated by Toby Dale of CreateDrop media studio — see here for the full set, and perhaps to buy (at very reasonable set-your-own-price prices!) the high-resolution download versions. Expertly shot, print-ready, and full-resolution images — and all proceeds, as ever, to the fund that will keep our pool running for the community in 2026.

Tickets available now for DOGGY SPLASH DAY 2! On Saturday 4th October -- due to huge demand for our event on 27th September, we're going again next Saturday with an event they're already calling Splashback! [Are they? Maybe they should reconsider - Ed] This is again a TICKETED event, tickets required for dogs (but not people) -- We've got prizes to be won, including from Streatham's finest and dog-friendliest pub @thebullstreatham

We've got a ball pit for rummaging in 🏐🏐

We've got food (sausages, of course 🌭🌭) from @bavarianboylondon - he sells the best Wurst at the German embassy dontcha know

We've got sellers of the finest doggy things, like @readyforwalk_dogaccessories

💦💦 AND WE'VE GOT LOTS AND LOTS OF THE VERY SPLASHIEST WATER YOU CAN FIND ANYWHERE AND THAT'S A GUARANTEE 💦💦

💦💦 All proceeds go to operating our community-run, donation-funded, free-to-use paddling pool in 2026 (and beyond!) 💦💦 -- everything for a great trip out for good girls and boys. And all proceeds go to operating our community-run, donation-funded paddling pool in 2026 (and beyond!).

NOW SOLD OUT! Join the waiting list on our ticket site >>> Tickets available now for Doggy Splash Day on Saturday 27th September -- this is a TICKETED event, tickets required for dogs (but not people) -- we're hosting the Dog & Bay @dockandbay casting call till 1pm - your dog could be their new ambassador! [edit Ambassadog surely?] - and there will be great D&B giveaways all day long -- plus loads of water to splash in, a ball pit to rummage in, a food stand (sausages, of course, from Bavarian Boy @bavarianboylondon), lovely things from @readyforwalk_dogaccessories, and mud and leaves and tennis balls -- everything for a great trip out for good girls and boys. And all proceeds go to operating our community-run, donation-funded paddling pool in 2026 (and beyond!).

It was great to get our new planters planted up with plants, with plenty of the summer still left to go. Huge thanks to our local civic group Streatham Action for connecting us up with the funding for the materials for these. Equally huge thanks to Charlie M and Chris G, especially, for all their work getting them made, and to everyone else who painted, decorated, or just chipped in along the way. Like everything else at the pool, it seemed like a simple job on paper but then turned out to be on a surprisingly big scale, taking a lot of work to turn ideas into reality. But now they're looking all colourful and flowery, which was the basic idea, and we're delighted that we got there in the end.

For next year, we'd love to use these planters to display the horticultural efforts of our community - so if you're a school or some sort of community organisation, or even if maybe you're simply a person, and you can grow some plants that could brighten up a public space, then we'd love to hear from you in the spring. Keep your ears tuned and your green fingers poised.

We're in urgent need of three or four people who can keep the pool open throughout the summer holidays. This is especially on the evening shifts, locking up and doing a small amount of maintenance work. It could be as little as one hour, once a week. Could you be one of them? Do you know someone else who could? Click here to see what's involved

Paddling pool review campaign! We've had thousands more through the gates this weekend, cementing the pool's place as Streatham's premier outdoor child-cooling facility. We hope everyone had a good time, splashing, sunbathing, or just sitting in the shade. We're *very* grateful for all donations made to help run and improve the pool (text "POOL 5" or "POOL 10" to 70085 to donate £5 or £10, if you can). BUT we're also always looking for more online reviews, so we can prove how much our paddling pool is loved and needed! Can you help? Find us on Google Maps, or give us a Review/Recommendation on our Facebook page, or leave a comment on our Instagram - it doesn't matter where you write it (well ok, within reason), just write it! Thanks!

Massive thanks to all who came to the PLUG Art Workshop on Saturday at the Rookery Market to help design the community mural for the pool! Video on Instagram here. Special thanks to our artists, Henrietta, @melaniejrussell and @littlehouseofholly for hosting and inspiring such a fun, free activity - as you can see we now have a mountain of amazing designs to work with, so WATCH THIS SPACE!

The pool is once again clean enough to eat your dinner off, in preparation for another 30-degree weekend. Filling up nicely, albeit slowly. Water levels will be low on Thursday, back to normal Friday. Obviously eating your dinner off it isn't really recommended because of the chlorine, and also the water. It would have to be something quite dry to start with. Certainly nothing looser than a tagine, say.

The paddling pool's own team of artists will be at the Rookery's midsummer market on Saturday 21st June - Instagram video here - workshopping new designs for the pool wall. Find them and help them! Also there's loads of other stuff to do, look at, and eat. From 10am.

Help us run and improve the pool this summer! Can you spare an hour or two on a Wednesday? Take a CSR day from work to help (and be outside in the sun)? Could you chip in at a fundraising day on Saturday 19th July? Send us an email, hello@scpp.org.uk, or look out for messages on our WhatsApp groups. We actually do need you. We're not just saying it. We really do. Yes really! Yes, I know people say it all the time. But honestly, we don't have enough people for this. And yes, it's you. Specifically and primarily you. So email us! Thanks!

Meet Pondo and Poolio. He's a big, bluff unit from Germany. She's sassy and agile and designed in New Jersey. An unlikely couple, but a dream team of pool hoovers. He can only reach the shallows, she only works in the deep bits. Sorry about the bits in the middle. Thanks to them, and their human handlers (Adrian, Georgia), the pool's looking pretty good. Open again 10am tomorrow (Thursday)

After all the cleaning and painting and cleaning again, finally time to turn the taps on. The pool fills at a sedate pace - but you can watch a speeded-up version here - 25 hours of sunset, sunrise and a couple of visits from the locals, in just 2.5 minutes.

The pool turned blue again on Sunday for the first time in four years, as volunteers came together to get this infamously big job done. Watch the whole ten-hour process in a one-minute video here. The morning had felt like slow going, but an emergency lunchtime shout-out brought reinforcements, and the last patches were eventually filled in with the light fading and only a splash of paint left from the 85 litres we started with.

Doggy Splash Day is back on Easter Saturday, 19th April. All well-behaved canine boys and girls are welcome to come and have a splash around before they get cruelly banned for the rest of the summer when the children move in. We're on at the same time as the Market at the Rookery opposite, where there's an Easter Egg Hunt happening too. Any and all donations to the paddling pool fund are much appreciated - it's all community-funded and community-operated, and there's plenty to be done to get our old pool into good shape for the summer. *Splash Day is dependent on all being ok with our water sample, which is currently being lab tested (that's laboratory really, not labrador). Check back later in the week for confirmation.

We are PLUG (the Pool Lovers' and Users' Group), which developed in summer 2024 with the aim of getting the water back in the pool and keeping it there for many summers to come. And we need you!

We're an entirely volunteer-run part of the Streatham Common Cooperative (SCCoop), which runs the Rookery Gardens and other bits of the common. It's SCCoop that officially operates the pool, as it has done since 2016, when Lambeth Council decided that it could no longer afford to run it (or some others in the borough, such as the similar traditional paddling pool at Ruskin Park). But SCCoop has also found itself unable to dedicate enough time to running the pool in recent years, because of its own financial and staffing pressures.

So to keep the pool open into what will be its 88th year in 2025 — and hopefully to keep it going strong to its centenary — the jobs of maintaining the pool, running it on a daily basis, and raising funds for both short-term costs and potential major repairs in the future, now lie with PLUG and the Streatham community.

We still get lots of help and support, especially from SCCoop, the council (which still owns the pool) and from the Friends of Streatham Common (FoSC, the charity dedicated to looking after the common). We really couldn't do it without them.

But we need you too! Don't think that maybe we don't, because we've already got enough people. We really haven't. We really do.

You can help us before the season: with gardening jobs, helping build stuff, making signs, cleaning the pool, and painting it. You can help by opening the pool in the mornings, closing it in the evenings; or by helping organise fundraising events, being there to staff them, finding raffle prizes, selling tickets on the gate. You could help us draw up plans for the longer term, raise funds from outside organisations, link us to local businesses who might want to support us.

It's a worthwhile cause. On several hot August afternoons last year there were 200 people and more at the pool at once, escaping the heat. Over the seven weeks that the pool was open, several thousands came through the gate (and sometimes it was nice and quiet, too...) It's a unique place, part of Streatham's heritage and important to its soul — let's make sure we keep the water in it!

The paddling pool clearly has a place in the hearts of people who grew up in Streatham - passers-by regularly stop to say how they remember being there as a child, sometimes several decades ago. But we don't have any pictures of it from before the days of Facebook and Google Reviews. Does anyone have any old photos — or just stories and memories — that they might able to share with us?

The existing concrete paddling pool dates back to 1938 - but there was a pool (and no doubt plenty of paddling) on the site long before that. This map of Streatham from 1877 shows the "top pond", circled, with its rounded shape flattened by the road on its north side — the same outline is still there today. The common's other paddling pool, at the bottom of the hill, made way for the children's playground in 2016.

This photo of the pond - taken from this archive of old pictures of Streatham - is from around 1905. It's the only one we have, from before the mid 2010s, so any pictures (or memories) from that century-long gap between the two would be wonderful. You can send us an email to the address at the bottom of the page - we'd love to hear from you!

The sun setting over the common and the pool on the last day of February, and of meteorological winter. Spring about to be sprung. The paddling season approaching. Do please donate, if you can. Or sign up to help us run the pool, if you can. Or just join our WhatsApp group, or follow us on Instagram or BlueSky, so we can keep you up to date (and nag you to donate and help later).

If you prefer your recreation to be less wet, the chess tables on the common offer a beautiful view on a sunny day, through your opponent's shattered defences and over the south London plains to Morden and maybe even beyond (are we really just writing this nonsense to fill up space and justify the use of this old photo?). To find the tables from the paddling pool, turn right and go just past the council bins, where you'll be pleasantly upwind of them, given a prevailing breeze. Pieces are available to borrow from the adjacent Rookery cafe, which you can see just over there, if you're looking in the right direction.