Swimming pools started to become popular and more affordable in the late 50′s. By the 60′s there was a boom in installations and a rapid growth of installers across the UK.
Unit Swimming Pools and Regency Swimming Pools were established in 1959 and by coincidence they were both founded in Wolverhampton. Each finding it’s own specific niche in the market.
Unit concentrated on a high spec concrete and hollow block reinforced shell, whereas Regency concentrated on the GRP – Glass Fibre – Fibre Glass laminated swimming pool.
J W Green Swimming Pools Limited evolved from a plumbing, heating and general building business owned and run by John William Green.
JWG built his first swimming pool in 1963. This was an indoor, reinforced concrete pool in Bridgnorth, designed for a private client by Twentyman Percy and Partners. The pool was built using a Unit Swimming Pool ” Unicrete Kit ”
The then founder of Regency Swimming Pools, George Tranter, had served in WWII in the RAF as an unarmed reconnaissance photographer.
George then set up an advertising agency and several other businesses after the war. In the 50′s he took an interest in a GRP lamination factory, where the ready made swimming pools evolved in several different sizes. They were moulded complete with all the fittings built in, put on the back of a lorry and delivered to your home, ready to be craned into a prepared excavation, backfilled with sand and filled at the same time with water and as is today, you had a pool in a matter of a few weeks.
George went on to sell something like eight thousand or so GRP pools, one of which was sent out on the deck of a cargo ship for a hotel in Malta.
Unit Swimming Pools started life on the old Pendeford airfield, adjacent to Boulton and Pauls.
The airfield was turned into a forerunner of what were to become Industrial Estates.
Unit brought in Anthony panel pools from America, then evolved the Unicrete Swimming Pool Kit.
They sold kits and had several installer teams building fully reinforced concrete pools all across the UK for domestic and commercial clients. A service division followed, with a team of engineers covering the UK in a small fleet of pale blue Morris Minor Estate Cars – the ones with the timber frame cladding.
Over the years Unit Swimming Pools sold or installed over five thousand swimming pools. They were taken over by the John Folkes Hefo Group, sold on to The Provincial Group and then bought by J W Green Swimming Pools in the early nineties.
Buying the Regency and Unit names included of course their customer base, which gave JWG the inroad to pool chemical and add on equipment sales.
Back to Aladdin.
Are you one of the old Unit or Regency pool owners?
Well, some swimming pools have been in service now, for over forty years, whilst many are still very serviceable, they are a little tired. The increasing market for us now, is swimming pool refurbishment. We have sand blasted off old painted surfaces, stripped renders and or Marblite finishes, shallowed pools to a constant depth, cutting water, heating and chemical bills, re-rendered and fixed vitreous mosaic, hand cut key patterns and murals, brought outdoor swimming pools inside with a range of covers and enclosures, upgraded heating systems from condensing boilers to solar panels from air to water heat pumps to geothermal systems. So do not write your old pool off, bring it back to life.
Quotations without obligation.