How has the character of the seaside holiday changed?

The image many have today of the seaside is of a “cheap and cheerful” holiday destination and decidedly low status at that. This was not always so and the changing nature of the seaside holiday resort has been shaped by and has reflected developments in wider society since its earliest times in the 18th century as a preserve of the rich to its transformation as a mass tourism phenomenon and more recently, its decline in the face of competition from foreign holidays. The character of the seaside is a product of the relations between classes, culture, working conditions, patterns in leisure and technological advances and the changes in them over time. It should be pointed out that that none of these factors should be taken in isolation but have all worked together to determine the development of seaside resorts, the activities offered by them and the clientele which they attracted.
The first resorts originated in the 18th century and were frequented by the upper and middle classes with money and leisure time. The emphasis from these early days and well into the 20th century was on the health giving nature of a stay by the sea. These early resorts offered the benefits of bathing in what was regarded as the curative waters of the sea, and natural attractions such as the sea air, also regarded as having healthy properties. Sea bathing was not seen as a recreational activity; (Brunton, no date, p.170) rather it was seen as therapeutic and involved immersion in the water rather than swimming in it. In the next century, as the seaside’s popularity grew, swimming was seen to be something which could be enjoyed for its own sake.
Taking the air was also seen as beneficial to health, and promenades, parks and gardens for visitors to walk in became a feature of seaside resorts. Piers which offered the sensation to the walker of being out at sea were common throughout the 19th century (Brunton, no date, p.173) and by its end were a feature of all the major resorts. Although the healthy benefits of walking and bathing were still emphasised, the piers, gardens and promenades in resorts pointed to the development of man made attractions at the seaside, a trend which was to continue in the 19th and 20th centuries as the accent was increasingly put on fun and entertainment.
Swimming was by the early 20th century no longer seen as therapeutic but as good exercise, (Brunton, no date, p.173) and was given a boost in popularity by the general health craze of the those years. In the 1920s and 1930s more facilities were provided for swimming, such as changing rooms and lifeguards. Swimming pools filled with sea water were built where the beach was unsuitable for bathing. Other sports were catered for such as tennis and golf and widened the seaside’s range of attractions (Brunton, no date p.175).
Another notion of the medical science of the day was that of the beneficial effects of sunshine. This led to a rise in popularity of sunbathing; to this day a typical seaside activity. A tan was seen as something desirable from the mid 1920s (Brunton, no date, p177) and was not only regarded as healthy but also glamorous. The activities of swimming and sunbathing raise questions about the forms of dress and etiquette prevalent at different times throughout the history of seaside holidays. It also raises questions about class distinctions at the seaside and charts the changes in perceptions of propriety.
The early holidaymakers, at least middle class women were extremely coy about exposing flesh at seaside resorts. This was partly to do with propriety but also based on the idea that only workers, as a result of working outside, were tanned. Women wore dresses which covered up arms and legs while men wore suits, ties and hats. Although the seaside presented an opportunity for showing off, for the working class their Sunday best suit was probably the only decent set of clothes they had (Faire, no date, p.134).
While middle class women continued to use bathing machines in the 19th century to ensure privacy while changing, men of all classes, and working class women, continued, until well into the 19th century to swim naked. This conflicted with the moral standards of the time and many beaches were segregated or had different times for male and female bathing (Faire, no date, p.139).
Between the two World Wars, more flesh was exposed on the beach with arms and calves allowed to be bared, although dresses and shoes were still worn, even on the beach. Swimsuits became more revealing, perhaps reflecting the craze for sunbathing. A curious fact was that in the 1920s man and women’s swimming costumes were very alike; an indication that it was still not acceptable for men to bare their torso. This had changed by the 1930’s and in the years after the Second World War the types of seaside dress more familiar to us today became fashionable. A survey by Harrison (Faire, no date, p.137) showing changes in promenade wear between 1937 and 1960 showed, to give one example, that 29% of men wore sandals in 1960 as opposed to 0% in 1937. This was in line with the “new democracy of dress” noted by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon in the early 1900s (Faire, no date, p.133) and an indication, that at the seaside at least, class distinctions were becoming less visible.
As we have seen by the 19th century the seaside offered more than health cures to its visitors. The greatest impetus to this trend was given by the massive influx of the working class to the seaside helped by the spread of the railways from the 1840s. The railways made the seaside accessible to a growing number of people offering cheaper and faster transport. The industrial revolution also provided the social context in which demand for visits to the seaside was to increase among the working classes (Chant, no date, p.151). The harshness of life in industrial cities encouraged many to escape, if only for a day, to more congenial surroundings. The influx of working class visitors to seaside resorts would radically change them. As Chant points out (Chant, no date, p.148) in speaking of Blackpool’s transformation into a working class resort this influx constituted “the beginning of the reconstruction of the seaside experience as pure fun and entertainment”.
The sheer numbers involved would alone have been enough to alter the character of the resorts. Between 1865 and 1913 the number of annual visitors to Blackpool increased, according to Walton, from 285,000 to 3,850,000. (Chant, no date, p.153) These working class, and for the most part day trippers, limited by lack of financial resources and sufficient leisure time to enjoy longer stays, contrasted with the better off seaside holidaymakers who often stayed for weeks or even months, were drawn to the seaside more for the release from the monotony and hardship of their working lives than for the health cures sought by the middle class.
The resorts now had to cater for two very different markets, each with their own expectations of the seaside and tastes in entertainment. As Herbert points out, (Herbert, no date, p109) this conflict and the need to resolve it and to satisfy the demands of the distinct markets gave much of the character to seaside holidays and constituted a move towards the notion of a seaside holiday as fun and entertaining as well as healthy. It influenced trends in the facilities, entertainment and infrastructure of the resorts. What then were these activities and attractions offered by the seaside resort and how were they enjoyed by different clientele?
Much of the entertainment on offer in the resorts was similar to that found in towns and cities. However, the conflict between working and middle class visitors, particularly from the 1870s, meant that in many resorts there existed a degree of segregation, some resorts even having distinct areas for the different classes of holidaymaker (Herbert, no date, p.111). For example, the North pier in Blackpool offered concerts featuring orchestras and had an admission charge to deter the less well off, while the Central offered open-air dancing.
Piers were venues for music, dancing and departure points for boat trips. The original function of these structures was to serve the steamboat trade, but as the railways supplanted these as a means of transport they were adapted by enterprising resorts as a further attraction, (Chant, no date, p.156) again underlining the emphasis on fun and entertainment at the seaside and proving the adaptability of resort entrepreneurs.
Open-air music featuring brass or military bands was a common form of entertainment for the working classes. Music of all forms was an important feature of seaside holidays and the popular brass band contests of the Victorian era (Herbert, no date, p114) was a formula which was enjoyed across the class divide. As the repertoire was often based on classical music they pleased the “rational recreationists” who sought to promote improving activities among the working class.
Technological advances, particularly in the area of mass public transport, while contributing greatly to the development of seaside resorts, in the long run were instrumental in their decline. The introduction of motorised road transport provided competition to the train as a means of carrying people to the sea. On one hand, the decrease in fares made the seaside even more accessible for low paid workers but on the other the greater access to private cars among the middle classes in the years between the two world wars offered new possibilities for holiday making. For example, touring or camping (Chant, no date, p.160). The greatest impact however was to come in the shape of the cheap foreign package holiday, a development which originated from the late 1950s.
Foreign holidays especially to Spain, the British holidaymaker’s favoured destination, provided something that the British seaside could not; guaranteed sunshine. An interesting thing about Spanish holidays was how similar they were to ones in Britain. The British seaside holiday had in many ways merely been transplanted to Spanish soil. The continuing appeal of these types of holidays is evidence of the popularity of the seaside. Why then did the British people abandon British resorts in their millions? The sun was one factor; another was perhaps a trend which could be observed throughout the history of the seaside holiday and which was rooted in social change and progress and class awareness.
The original resorts were intended for the upper classes and aristocracy. Gradually, the better off sections of the middle class joined them in turn to be joined by the working class as advances in transport, working conditions increased leisure time and spending power made it possible for them to partake in holidays, to the extent that in modern times the seaside holiday has become to be regarded as a preserve of the working class. Ironically a similar process seems to be at work in the case of the foreign seaside holiday. Numbers continue to decrease as more, mostly middle class families abandon many of the Spanish resorts, many of which have long been derided for their vulgarity, and no place for decent people and families.
Still, it is a measure of the distance travelled in living standards, spending power and leisure time that working people have gone from scrimping and saving for their annual trip to the seaside to travelling to resorts in Spain, Portugal and Greece. The status to be gained and expressed by ones choice of holiday destination is a constant in the history of seaside holidays. The British seaside holiday has lost much of the status which it once had as have the once more glamorous foreign resorts.
The story of the seaside holiday is a reflection of the social history of the country. Class, technological advances, dress, the changing patterns in work and leisure and the rise in living standards have all influenced the nature of the seaside holiday and have in turn been reflected by it. What is the future for this institution? Perhaps the answer lies in Chant’s observation (Chant, no date, p.167) “There are signs that the beach and the sea are becoming less than integral to the seaside holiday”. The strength of the seaside holiday in the past has been its ability to enhance the seaside’s natural attractions with man made ones widening its appeal and emphasizing the fun element of the seaside experience and to adapt to changing conditions and tastes. Or, it could be that the decline of the British seaside resort is another chapter in the social history of the country of which it has been an integral part.