Swinton Estate Wild Swimming Lake (Coffin Lake)

Coffin Lake is the wild-swim lake in the grounds of Swinton Park Hotel, Masham, HG4 4JH. Purpose-built platform, woodland, lily pads. Complimentary if you are already a Swinton Country Club day guest, or staying at the hotel, a cottage, or Swinton Bivouac. Day visitors buy a parkland and gardens pass: £10 a day, or £75 a year, from Country Club reception. Then you still pre-book a one-hour slot. You go because it is a private Yorkshire estate lake you can actually pay to use. You also go knowing they provide no safety cover. The lake is not monitored. Swimming alone is a breach of their rules. If you want a lifeguard and a marked loop, this is the wrong pin.

Getting in

Book the hour by phone or email, not an app. Country Club reception: 01765 680950, or spareservations@swintonestate.com. Passes at the same desk. Hotel / cottage / Bivouac / Country Club guests skip the £10 and still need the slot.

Year-round, 7am or sunrise (whichever is later) until 9pm or sunset (whichever is earlier). That is the window, not a suggestion that someone is on the bank at dusk. Bring your own towel. They can provide a tow float. Age 12+. Under-16s with an adult.

A summer-solstice week in 2026 (15–21 June) was listed as a charity swim for Harrogate Homeless Project, still £10, still a booked hour. That is an event skin on the same product, not a second lake.

The swim

A small estate lake with a platform and a ladder, not a quarry circuit. No published course length. No lifeguard. You appoint a companion to watch from the shore. They do not check whether you come back. Read that twice.

Woodland, lily pads, quiet if the slot is quiet. It is sold as suitable for first-timers and regulars; the estate’s own safety text is the more useful sentence. An older 2023 launch piece quoted summer water at about 12–16°C. That is historical colour, not a 2026 reading. Wetsuit is your call.

You are on a hotel estate. Country Club is where you book and pay. Do not treat the rest of the 20,000-acre estate as a swim shoreline.

Worth knowing

Unmanaged in the water, ticketed on the bank. That combination is the whole offer. If the companion rule bothers you, pick a supervised lake. Pool Bridge Farm outside York is the other Yorkshire commercial swim people actually drive to — four lakes, a different operation, not this listing.

Maximum numbers are not on the 2026 activity page. A 2023 press piece said eight at a time. Do not bank on that figure; the reception booking is the cap that matters.

It is not a day out for under-12s. It is not a training venue. It is a booked hour in a coffin-shaped estate lake, with a float if you want one, and nobody watching except the person you brought.