The arrival of the railways and increasing leisure time among the working populations of Britain's major cities led to the traditional summer holiday spent at resorts on the coast.
"Wake Weeks", when the machinery in the Lancashire cotton mills was closed down for annual maintenance, saw thousands of mill workers descend on places like Blackpool and Southport, which became major holiday venues. Blackpool's population mushroomed from 14,000 in 1881 to 47,000 in 1901.

colourised photo of Blackpool in 1898;

An unhappy holiday experience in his youth, when he was locked out of his digs by his landlady all day and left to wander about aimlessly, caused Billy Butlin to open the first of his holiday camps at Skegness in 1936. In these facilities, there was always something to do. The cost worked out at roughly one weeks' wages for one weeks' holiday, making Butlins camps very affordable and very popular.


Butlins advert:

No visit to the seaside would be complete with fish & chips and/or ice cream.
Nardini's art décor café originally built in 1935, on Largs seafront. There was a large influx of Italians into the UK  in the 1890s who established themselves in the catering industry;

The seaside holiday reached its' peak in the 1940s &50s;

A packed Margate Beach sometime in the 50s;



Aberdeen Beach post war. The concrete anti-invasion obstacles from WW2 are still in place.

The 1930s saw a boom in outdoor swimming pools, no less than 169 of these, Lidos, were built across the UK (not just at the seaside) by various local authorities. The Jubilee Pool (1935) in Penzance had an unusual triangular layout.

"Going  doon the watter for the Fair"

Clyde holidays

The most northerly Lido in the UK is the seawater pool at Stonehaven ( 1934). This pool is heated ( it would need to be!!!) and has survived to the present day;
photo from the 1940s

Knobbly Knees contest at Butlins. The "Redcoats", as the Butlins staff were known, was often a starting point for many entertainers, Dave Allen and Des O'Connor were among those began their careers at Butlins.

Triceratops wrote:

No visit to the seaside would be complete with fish & chips and/or ice cream.

There was a large influx of Italians into the UK in the 1890s who established themselves in the catering industry;

There had been another large influx of Italians to London in the 1850s at about the time that large quantities of ice started to be imported from North America, particularly by the Wentham Lake Ice Company. Quick to catch at an opportunity and often lacking the initial finance to buy business premises, many of these Italian immigrants set up small businesses selling hard, gaudily coloured ices known as "penny licks" (often made with not the freshest milk and bulked out with corn starch) in the streets from hand-carts. They announced their wares with cries of "ecco un poco!", ensuring their nickname of Hokey Pokey men ... and so the ice cream van was born.

"Hokey Pokey", haven't heard that expression in years !!!!! thanks Meles.

This is an American import, inspired by Coney Island. The Scenic Railway roller coaster opened at Margate in 1920. Photo from the 1930s;

A book called Images of the Past, the British Seaside by Lucinda Gosling has been published this year. A preview of some of the great photographs in it can be seen here:

Seaside holidaymakers in Britain

Vizzer,

I tried to find photos of the 19th century Belgian coast, but I didn't find anything substantial.
Only this:
http://www.vub.ac.be/C-HIM/attachments/papers/davy_depelchin.pdf
Then I tried with the most important ones of the 19th century:
Ostend
https://www.loc.gov/photos/?fa=location%3Abelgium%7Clocation%3Aostend&sb=title_s
De Haan
goo.gl/KtE65R

Kind regards from Paul.

I cannot remember ever seeing one of these:



perhaps there was, but I've forgotten.

One the other hand, I do remember seeing donkeys on the beach.

This photo is of donkeys on the beach at Schevingen, Netherlands:

I remember Punch & Judy from family holidays but I can't say it ever appealed to me even as a child.

The uniquely French form of this sort of entertainment, Guignol, still seems very popular judging by the various posters that appear in all resort towns here in summer. I believe, though I've never actually seen a performance, that Guignol has less slapstick and more biting satire than does Punch and Judy, and is aimed at adults as much as at children (perhaps in the same way as good Christmas pantomime comedy operates on several levels and simultaneously appeals to a wide age-range). In fact I think there are often special evening performances specifically tailored to predominantly adult audiences, which in their humour are probably more akin to TV's 'Spitting Image'-type satire of the 1980s (indeed a similar program still regularly airs on French TV, and is called 'Les Guignols').

Guignol was the creation of Laurent Mourguet an illiterate silk weaver from Lyon. During the French Revolution the silk industry largely collapsed and Mourguet lost his job. To support his family he became a peddler and then took up dentistry (as you do) becoming an itinerant tooth-puller. The service was free: he made his money from selling snake-oil medicines afterward to ease the pain. To attract patients he started setting up a puppet show in front of his dentist's chair featuring 'Polichinelle', the traditional Italian 'Punch' character. His strategy worked well and eventually he gave up dentistry altogether to become a professional puppeteer, creating his own scenarios drawing on the concerns of his working-class audience and improvising references to the news of the day. He developed characters closer to the daily lives of his Lyon audience: Guignol himself; Guignol's wife Madelon; Gnafron, a wine-loving cobbler; and the gendarme, Flageolet ... plus a variety of other topical characters often based on real and well-known people.

Although nominally a silkweaver like much of his original audience, Guignol's profession changes as does his marital status: he can be in turn valet, peddler, carpenter, shoemaker, or unemployed; and at times he is Madelon's husband but at others her smitten suitor, according to requirements of the scenario. What remain constant are his poverty, but more importantly his good humor and his sense of justice. In modern French "guignol" is generally an insult meaning "buffoon", but actually Guignol is clever, courageous and generous, and his inevitable victory is always the triumph of good over evil.

Flageolet (the gendarme), Guignol, et Gnafon (the alcoholic cobbler):

Triceratops wrote:

One the other hand, I do remember seeing donkeys on the beach.

This photo is of donkeys on the beach at Schevingen, Netherlands:

Triceratops and what about the fishermen on horseback of the Belgian coast?





Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

To attract patients he started setting up a puppet show in front of his dentist's chair featuring 'Polichinelle', the traditional Italian 'Punch' character.

There is a view that the Italian character is very ancient indeed and even pre-dates Rome originating in Oscan Atella. Unlike their, perhaps, more famous Etruscan neighbours, the Oscan group of Italic speaking people were relatively easily absorbed by the expanding Latins from Rome because their languages were closely related. In pre-Latin Oscan society, athletic games were accompanied by cultural events such as plays and recitals etc. The most well-known of these were the Fabulae Atellanae, a series of dramatic fables normally presented in the form of comedy and usually as farce. They derived their name from Atella one of the principal cities of Oscan Campania which today lies in the northern suburbs of Naples the city from which the character of Pulcinella would later emerge. The Attelan farces became popular in ancient Rome and were, perhaps, more akin to Guignol than to Punch & Judy. They included a set of clownish characters such as a pantaloon, a hunchback, a doctor and a boaster etc.



(Comic figurine dug up near Pompeii. Is this the Atellan beak-nosed clown Maccus believed to be the predecessor of Pulcinella and Punch?)

Being more adult-orientated, the short plays were often spun to match contemporary political matters and social subjects. They often targeted the rich and powerful and consequently drew their attention too. Ultimately they drew too much attention from people who were too powerful and ended up being banned throughout the empire by the emperor Tiberius. He famously enjoyed spending time by the sea having a fabulous seaside villa at Sperlonga and another on the island of Capri. No doubt he felt that the contemporary Punch & Judy shows spoiled his holidays by lowering the tone.

We don't really have these traditions in New Zealand/Aotearoa, but we do have the tradition of swimming on the shortest day of the year. Every year you see (on television or in the newspapers) pictures of up to 50 people on a beach quite far south in freezing temperatures all rushing into the water. 

I don't know what I didn't notice it or comment on it at the time but hokey pokey ice-cream regularly tops the list of most popular ice-creams in NZ. It is a vanilla ice-cream with honeycomb toffee lumps in it. I think we have some in our freezer at the moment, though I have myself never been an ice-cream lover. I like a little bit and often ask for a small one, though what I think of as small and what an icecream vendor thinks of as small varies greatly - I just want a tablespoon of icecream - it is mostly the cone I like! 
I was quite surprised when I learnt some years ago that hokey pokey came from these Italians in Britain.

Yes, in the late 1840s when large quantities of ice started to become available in London (imported from NE America by the Wenham Lake Ice Company) it was Italian immigrants who first seized the opportunity this offered by selling from street barrows, brightly-coloured ices made from cheaply-bought milk that was getting past its best (and was often not the cleanest either) mixed with industrially made cornstarch, sugar and chemical dyes. They lured their customers (mostly children) for their "penny licks", with cries of "oh che poco" - "oh how little", or "ecco un poco" - "here's a little bit", thereby earning themselves the enduring name of Hokey Pokey men.

EDIT : D'oh, I'd already posted almost exactly the same above, on Fri Jun 24, 2016.

You may not personally consume that much ice-cream, Caro, but I see that New Zealanders as a whole are the biggest eaters of ice-cream in the world: per capita consumption of ice cream and related products is estimated to be 22-23 litres per annum (New Zealand Statistics) which is just ahead of Australia and the USA, and well ahead of Britain.