The Beach Hut

As the summer holiday season gets underway,  more and more of us are choosing to enjoy exploring our own beautiful country rather than venturing further afield. Many of us reach for the buckets and spades and head for the seaside, and what conjures up an image of the British Seaside Resort more than the modest Beach Hut?

Beach huts may appear pretty humble but their story is very much linked with the history of the seaside resort, going back more than 250 years.

By the time Queen Victoria came to the throne, bathing machines were a common seaside sight. They were very much like a beach hut on wheels, in which bathers changed as a horse pulled them from the top of the beach down into the sea. Even Queen Victoria had her own personal bathing machine built at Osbourne on the Isle of Wight.

Doctors began to prescribe sea bathing as a rememdy to cure all ills, and the sick and their families headed to the coast to be treated. Soon the beaches were no longer just a place for smugglers and fishermen. These new visitors required accommodation and demanded entertainment, and so the modern British Seaside Resort was born.

As it gradually became acceptable for people to walk across the sands in their bathing costumes, rows of stripy changing tents appeared on the beaches. Some of the bathing machines began to lose their wheels and new purpose built huts began to appear.

In the inter-War period bathing machines were becoming obsolete as sunbathing became the new fashion and modern looking blocks of beach huts beagan to appear. After the Second World War, once all the barbed wire and defenses had been removed from the beaches, holiday makers came back in their droves. The last of the bathing machines disappeared and the beach hut was very much in vogue.

Even today, beach huts are hot property, changing hands for vast sums.

Take a memory of your seaside holiday home and store your collected shells and treasures in our Beach Hut Storage Boxes, or start saving your pennies for your next trip away in our Beach Hut Money Boxes.

© Copyright Jim Champion and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Lifestyle, New England News. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.