Book of the Week: The Seaside

Madeleine Bunting describes how Butlin’s formula for fun was perfect for the new age of mass leisure

By the time Butlin’s opened in Skegness, holiday camps had become well established, often run by Christian organisations, churches or trade unions; accommodation was simple and cheap, and the camps offered the health benefits of fresh air and seawater alongside the character-building experience of camping camaraderie.

The Scouts, founded in 1908, and church boys’ clubs inculcated such tastes young. Butlin’s took the concept and made it fun. The aim was to keep prices low, but incorporate a new level of comfort plus plenty of entertainment, with amusement parks, dance halls, restaurants, tennis courts and playgrounds.

Butlin’s formula was timely. Two years after it opened, in 1938, a parliamentary act brought in paid holidays, and 15 million workers were now entitled to a week’s leave in the summer. Butlin’s became hugely popular and, in time, inspired competitors.

An international name, on occasion it shipped attractions to the continent. In one of the most tantalising chapters of the company’s history, Butlin retrieved 400 tons of big dippers and dodgems from the international fair at Liège weeks before the Nazi invasion of Belgium, by hiring canal boats to ferry the equipment by night to the coast and thence back to Hull.

Butlin’s camps ensured that England was at the vanguard of another wave of invention of the seaside resort, which carried them through a golden age in the post-war period, when the experience came within the reach of almost every family.

Part of Butlin’s success was recognising that the English seaside visitor needed to be kept busy. Shortly after he arrived from Canada in the 1920s, Butlin visited the resort of Barry Island in Wales, where he saw how the boarding houses turned their visitors out straight after breakfast, regardless of the weather.

Given the vagaries of the British climate, these visitors needed something to do, he concluded, and, with his background as a fairground hand, he had plenty of ideas. One of his most fabulous was to bring an elephant to Skegness beach, a sight which must have had spectators rubbing their eyes with disbelief.

Visitors’ expectations of comfort and entertainment were rising, and a windy beach was no longer enough. Another insight was to prove important: holidaymakers needed to be put at their ease, even jollied along. At a holiday camp in Canada, Butlin had been impressed by the friendliness, and attributed it to the fact that everyone had paid the same.

Noting that the deep class divisions of England were reflected in how its resorts had developed, Butlin spotted that in this new era of mass leisure, millions were coming to the seaside who were uncertain how to behave in this unfamiliar context. Butlin imported Canadian bonhomie and friendliness to put people at their ease, and Butlin’s attendants – they came to be known as Redcoats – were instructed to set the tone, cracking jokes and bantering with customers as they marshalled them through the day’s activities. Butlin wanted people to enjoy themselves, and he didn’t trust them to know how to do that without some help.

That insight now seems patronising, but it is backed up by the findings of the famous social research project started in the 1930s, the Mass Observation survey (MO), when its volunteers visited Blackpool. The researchers fanned out across the town to observe and interview visitors, and they were worried by what they saw. On the packed beaches, “the crowd was less friendly and joyful than it should be”, one noted, adding that “people tended to stay in their original groups”. They were surprised by “how little laughter there was in Blackpool crowds” and were concerned that instead, people were “too engrossed in pennies, resting, reading, gazing and gaping”.

The MO researchers were particularly surprised to discover that visitors had very little interest in the sea. In their interviews with 60 holidaymakers, only 28 confessed to even liking the sea. In his English Journey, published in 1934, JB Priestley came to the same conclusion, and in RC Sherriff’s iconic novel about one family’s holiday in Bognor Regis, The Fortnight in September (1931), the mother’s attempts to conceal her dislike of the water is a persistent theme. A Butlin’s holiday camp, away from the possible discomforts of sand and sea, ensured that such reservations were catered for.

This is an extract from The Seaside: England’s Love Affair by Madeleine Bunting (Granta Books).

We’ll be chatting to Madeleine on “A Drink with the Idler”, Thursday 18 May at 6pm London time. Book your tickets here. Free to Idler magazine and Academy subscribers.