On a burning summer afternoon, naked female bodies stretch out on the meadow beside Kenwood Ladies’ Pond, clustered and as content as Cézanne’s famous painting: intimately close; beatifically peaceful; proudly nude. Under weeping willow trees women splash in the cool water, chatting on floats, swimming in groups around the milky green lake, floating past ducks and moorhens nesting on the banks.
For a hundred years, women have swum here. Distinct from, and smaller, than Hampstead Heath’s Men’s Pond and Mixed Pond, the Ladies’ Pond is shielded by a canopy of trees — oaks, birches and sycamores keep this space blissfully free of the male gaze. Hiding a happy hidden medley of nipples, breasts and bums.
This has always been a space exclusively for women. It still is. But what is now in contention is the definition of what a woman is. It was 2017 when the City of London Corporation first announced that trans women would be admitted to the Ladies’ Pond, sparking a row that has raged for eight years. Following a Supreme Court judgement this April — which ruled under the Equality Act 2010 that men and women are defined by their biological sex — Sex Matters (who call themselves a “human rights charity”, but who have been criticised for supporting anti-trans campaigners) asked the City of London Corporation to reconsider that decision.
Read more: Who are Sex Matters? The group fighting to ban trans women from Hampstead Heath’s ‘ladies only’ pond
In response, the City of London has doubled-down — erecting a sign at the Ladies’ Pond informing swimmers that “those who identify as women” are welcome. Now Sex Matters have filed for a judicial review of that decision, submitting a case to the High Court. A devoted swimmer, like many I’m enchanted by the Ladies’ Pond’s gentile magic. Nothing comes close to the feeling of plunging into cool water there on a hot day, nor matches the soft camaraderie you feel in a space solely surrounded by other women. So I went to swim, and with wet hair spoke to other female swimmers to find out their views on a row that threatens to turn an idyllic place into a political battlefield.
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Being north London, everyone I spoke to had thought deeply about the matter. Yet none would let me print their real names, so incendiary has the “trans debate” become. An age schism among the women I spoke to quickly became apparent. Younger women are unequivocal in supporting trans women’s right to swim. They echo the mantra, “Trans women are women”, like Eleanor, 23, and Ali, 25, who I met on the wooded path by the pond. “I would never feel unsafe with a trans woman being in a female-only space,” Eleanor told me. “I see them as women. I have felt far more threatened by cisgender men than trans women… there’s far more to worry about when it comes to women’s rights.”
‘Fuelling transphobic argument’
Izzy, 28, overhearing our conversation, came to tell me emphatically: “Everyone should be allowed to swim here.” She has swum at the pond for five years and seen the discussion reach fever pitch, describing a recent experience in which her “transmasc non-binary” friend was harassed at the water when they undressed to reveal their top surgery. “We’re reaching a point where we start trying to police what a woman looks like,” Izzy says. “I worry this fear-mongering could make it a space less safe for everyone — trans and cis women.”
“The discussion very quickly becomes so hate-filled,” Cati, 28, worries. “People are using it as a way to fuel a transphobic argument rather than fight for the protection of women.” She notes the vast majority of sexual violence against women is committed by men, while violence by trans women against women is rare.
Read more: Serpentine splashers to Hampstead’s Bobble Hat Brigade — meet London’s power swimming tribes
Half-German, where both wild swimming and nudity are ubiquitous, she says, “in Germany everyone would just be naked together. If there’s someone causing an issue, then that person is removed — whatever their gender.” Not everyone agrees. “I think that unfortunately there are some people who just don’t embody the values of being a woman, and have ulterior motives,” worries one lady of 58. “The problem is, 90 per cent of the time it’s not actually trans women wanting to enter safe spaces, it’s predatory men who want to exploit the loophole in the law,” another woman, 44, alleges. “It should be treated on a case-by-case basis. The problem is the law is so black and white.” She says she’s overheard older women swimmers worrying about feeling physically intimated. “A lot of women have faced sexual violence from men,” she says. “So it’s triggering for some women to see somebody who looks anatomically male — the idea of having to share a changing room with somebody who has a penis is really upsetting to them.”
“I personally love the sense of freedom, that there is no male gaze, being able to be topless, it’s freeing,” another woman says.
“I personally love the sense of freedom, that there is no male gaze, being able to be topless, it’s freeing”
In court papers and on their website, Sex Matters detail the alleged experiences of women they claim have stopped swimming at the pond since trans women were allowed. Such as Carol, who “said she stopped going to the Ladies’ Pond three years ago, after seeing a man in a skimpy bikini rubbing himself and staring at women”.
They describe other uncomfortable incidents. A woman called Marilyn claims that while naked in the communal showers a “man” stood between her and her towel looking at her. She reported this as voyeurism to the police and raised a concern with the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association. She said: “It no longer feels safe to shower in that spot.” When I visited, I had been hoping to speak to trans women to find out their views, but sadly didn’t see any.
‘Parallel with gay rights is wrong’
There is testimony by a woman called “Alice”, who says she encountered a trans woman in the showers: “I was horrified and felt totally violated… I noticed the face of a girl next to me who looked visibly upset as she rushed out… although the swimmer kept their swimsuit on it was obvious they had male genitalia.”
Sex Matters describe an incident where a GP claims she saw a man in “a tight-fitting bikini bottom visibly displaying his male genitalia” standing in the women’s changing room staring at a group of naked teenage girls. She reported her concerns to the lifeguards, who said the person was entitled to be there.
Other incidents cited describe, not harassment, but trans women being present. For example, how “Sarah encountered a trans-identifying man in the showers and changing room in September 2023”; that “Valerie saw a young man with a full beard sitting in the meadow”; and “Emily said that in July 2025 there was a young man in a dress and make-up at the ponds.” And Amanda who “encountered a large naked man who came into the women’s showers when she was naked and vulnerable. She told the lifeguard, who said the man identified as a woman.”
Izzy, herself a queer woman, tells me she finds “very interesting parallels” between the way lesbians were once treated at the pond and how trans women are now being portrayed. Indeed, one swimmer in her eighties described to me how when she first when to the pond in the 1970s and 1980s people told her that when she went swimming at the Ladies’ Pond she should “watch out for the lesbians”.
“When I hear people talking about trans women, to me it’s the exact same rhetoric that people used to talk about lesbians. They’ve just changed the word”
“When I hear people talking about trans women, to me it’s the exact same rhetoric that people used to talk about lesbians,” Izzy says. “They’ve just changed the word.”
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns for Sex Matters, strongly disagrees. “This parallel with gay rights is wrong,” she tells me. “Lesbians are entitled to be at the Ladies’ Ponds because they are women. The objection to these people is not because they are trans — it’s because they are men.” She continues: “It’s not a question of how these people identify, it’s that this is a women’s space where women come expecting no male gaze, and now they are finding the opposite — it’s humiliating and uncomfortable.
“The fact some women don’t mind and think there are degrees of transition is irrelevant. The idea that women’s boundaries depend on whether a man has had some surgery is very disrespectful to women. This is a space for women, and you don’t get to redefine what being a woman means.”
Ultimately the question, as McAnena sees it, is: “Is it worth having a single-sex swimming area — is that legitimate?” And if so, “there can be no exceptions”, she says. She feels strongly that “there is a role for a single-sex space — women are being denied something here”.
A Stonewall spokesperson expressed concern not just about how “many of the trans community have been deeply frightened by a code of practice which takes the position of justifying exclusion rather than inclusion”, but also that there is likely to be an impact on trans men who will not be able to access either the ladies ponds or the men’s.
Interestingly, every woman I speak to of any age agrees preserving the Ladies’ Pond for women is important. Some note Muslim women swim here in burkinis and Orthodox Jewish women use the pool as their mikvah. Some refer to it as a “sacred” women’s space. One women points out the pool opened to women before all women got the vote: “They had so few rights, this was one space they had for themselves — that feels precious.”
As the cultural row over who a woman is rages on, this water has given physicality to an otherwise abstract-seeming debate — disrupting a peace that now feels so rare, and is part of the magic of this idyllic space.
