Holidays to the seaside

[rogerb]

Can anyone tell me when holidays to the coast etc became a thing, particulary for a typical working family.

[BillyF]

There`s a lot of information on Google !!

My father was brought up in a childrens home , until he was 14 in 1919. The children spent all the summer holidays at what we now call a holiday camp. In that respect he was more fortunate than other children who lived in the same town.

[Jebber]

Holidays were only for the wealthy as didn’t get paid for time off work until 1939, then it became law to have one weeks paid holiday, then in the 1950s it increased to two weeks paid holiday.

There is more interesting information here.
https://localhistories.org/a-history-of-holidays/

[BumbleB]

Look at "Wakes Week".    Especially in the north of England (I can't vouch for other areas).

[Little Nell]

I heard stories about holidays to Ramsgate in the 1930s, got the photos as well.  The family stayed in a boarding/lodging house but had to go out for their meals to what was described as "Grub Street" which I believe is York Street.

Nell

[mazi]

As early as 1913 the great western railway allowed the employees in Swindon free travel to seaside resorts such as Weymouth Tenby Torquay and others so the seaside weeks holiday in a boarding house was established by then.

The railways generosity did not extend to a paid weeks wages.

I lived in a seaside town and it’s history suggests it was well equipped with hotels and boarding houses by very early 1900s.

Mike

[Top-of-the-hill]

  But do you think those hotels and boarding houses would have been used by "a typical working family" at that time?

[mazi]

  But do you think those hotels and boarding houses would have been used by "a typical working family" at that time?

Depends what you class as a typical working family, if you had a steady job be it in a factory or cotton mill or a ledger clerk then yes I do, maybe not the big hotels but the boarding houses certainly.

I think that when people reminisce you only hear of the feckless or wealthy characters in the streets, the majority were steady prudent working people who put a bit aside each week and neither gambled nor drank away their wages, just lived quietly unnoticed.


Mike