IN its day it was a scheme as controversial as the IMAX, Dolphin Quay or the Winter Gardens.

The plan that was the hot potato of 1932 was to develop Bath Hill in central Bournemouth with shops together with a club and "the largest covered swimming pool in the world".

It was rejected but a scrapbook of cuttings and copies of protest letters has been unearthed by assistant librarian Michaela Horsfield among our archives.

The St Peter's Vicarage site had changed hands for £31,000 a year before having been bought by a syndicate including local builders Haywards.

Among the objectors to the £100,000 development was Herbert Russell Cotes of the Royal Bath Hotel, who was most perturbed by the possibility of shops being erected on Bath Hill.

In a letter to R H Lewis Manning Esq, dated January 1932, Herbert, son of Sir Russell and Lady Annie Russell-Cotes, wrote: "It would be too awful to contemplate empty shops with 'To Let' boards on the Bath Hill or any part of the approach between the Lansdowne and the Pier via the Bath Road.

"I can imagine shops of all types being there and the class gradually getting lower and lower."

In a memo to the Bournemouth town clerk, he wrote: "Those of us who have for many years striven to make Bournemouth a prosperous and beautiful resort have to stand aside and see this horrible operation performed." If shops had to be included to make the development viable, Russell-Cotes said they should be in the form of an "inner arcade" rather like that of a New York hotel.

Details of the scheme, that was turned down by Bournemouth County Borough Council but went to a planning appeal, were collected in cuttings from the Daily Echo in 1932.

It was hoped that the largest covered swimming bath in the world would stage "aquatic events of national and international championship significance". The club premises would include a dining room, lounge, ladies' games room and billiards and cards rooms, along with a balcony overlooking the sea and a roof garden incorporating a pool.

The planning inquiry into the appeal closed after two days and the unearthed file does not include the final decision. Luckily, Bourne-mouth's planning department was able to shed light on what eventually happened. The plan, it appears, was changed and a swimming pool was built two years later further to the east and known as Brighton Sports Stadium, that was soon turned into an ice rink.

Within a few years the Bath Hill Court block of flats was built on the site of the old vicarage by Parsonage Road. The pool plan in Bournemouth was scaled down to the more modest Pier Approach Baths, replacing the earlier bath house at the foot of the hill. And that is where the IMAX cinema now stands.