There’s no place like dome, says campaign group about Center Parcs' iconic structure

The Twentieth Century Society has launched a new nationwide campaign to celebrate the architecture of leisure centres and ‘protect the most historic examples’.

It has identified 10 of Britain’s leisure centres which it wants to put forward to be officially listed – and says the dome of the Subtropical Swimming Paradise in Center Parcs’ Sherwood Forest holiday village is worthy of protection.

The society says it forms the centrepiece of the village, built in 1986 and 1987 and the company’s first in the UK, and minor alterations to the dome over the years ‘have so far avoided irreconcilable loss of the original fabric’.

Catherine Croft, society director, said: “Thirty years after the Societies ‘Farewell my Lido’ campaign started the movement to save our vanishing outdoor bathing heritage, we hope this sequel will stir the same appreciation for these subtropical places of pleasure and play.

“The time to act and preserve the most notable leisure centres is now.”

The dome was designed by Center Parcs’ in-house architects in the Netherlands, originally led by the architect Jaap Bakema.

The society says it is important because the Center Parcs concept of holidays transformed holiday culture, with people given an alternative to package holidays to Europe.

Other sites on society’s list include Bell’s Sports Centre in Perth, Scotland, Clickimin Leisure Centre in Lerwick, Scotland, and Coventry Sports Centre.

Cath Slessor, society president, said: “With their palm trees, cafés and space-frame roofs, leisure centres conjured a welcome escape from perennial British gloom, transporting you to a different, more pleasurable world.

“Designed for exercising, socialising and for seeing and being seen, leisure centres took architecture to new and often bizarre heights of imagination.

“Now, sadly, many are at risk, but to lose such cherished local fixtures would diminish the communities they were designed to serve and jeopardise a rich seam of social and architectural history.”

Mansfield railway station is a listed building, as are a number of buildings in and around Leeming Street and Westgate. The headstocks and powerhouse at the former Clipstone Colliery are also listed.

Center Parcs has been contacted for its views on this campaign.