…and the health-giving benefits of sea-bathing, explored by Liz

My interest, and the interest of fellow Liberta hivies (and friends) in the history of beach huts and bathing machines, began over one of Sophie’s delicious Shepherd’s Pies on the evening of 12 September 2019. I find it difficult to believe it was that long ago.

Some  of us were in London for our publisher’s lunch and that evening we were gathered around Sophie’s supper table talking writing and books, as you do.

During the course of the evening someone suggested that we should write and publish an anthology of novellas.

This idea was greeted with enthusiasm and we immediately began brainstorming ideas for a setting which would link our stories. Someone (whistles innocently) suggested beach huts. More of that later.

Beach Huts and Bathing Machines

I recently attended an event at my local indie bookshop with Kathryn Ferry, who is an authority  on the history of the beach hut.

Icons of the seaside resort, they are wonderfully photogenic and suggestive of a certain kind of British eccentricity.

There is a kind of madness in paying the average price of £40,000 for what is essentially a garden shed on a beach. One that you can’t sleep in and has no “facilities”. The most expensive (at time of writing) in Mudeford, Dorset, was sold for £275,000.

We are not alone

The first known image of a bathing hut appeared in John Settrington’s engraving of Scarborough beach dated 1735.

They appear to be a particularly British institution, although in her book, Beach Huts & Bathing Machines, Kathryn mentions beach huts in Boulogne, at the popular Dutch seaside resort at Scheveningen, and at King Leopold’s royal resort at Ostend.

They were also in use in Germany at health resorts. In Australia, where there are sharks, they had a gated area for the occupant to bathe in safety.

For all the regional variations and ingenuity of British beach hut designs, in the nineteenth century the Belgian machine de luxe, with ornate roof details and windows engraved with local scenes, were the height of bathing machine style.

Sea bathing for health

In the 18th century there was a rush from the Spa to the sea, as noted in Beau Nash’s Life, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1730~

Your prudent grandmammas, ye modern belles,
Content with Bristol, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells,
When health required it, would consent to roam,
Else more attached to pleasures found at home;
But now alike, gay widow, virgin, wife,
Ingenious to diversify dull life,
In coaches, chaises, caravans, and hoys,
Fly to the coast for daily, nightly joys,
And all, impatient of dry land, agree
With one consent to rush into the sea.

And there was this in Scientific American Volume 49 Number 07 (August 1883); Page 104; Sea Bathing

“…it is, unquestionable that bathing in the open sea is, in itself, a powerful restorative agency, which many persons may employ with very great advantage.”

Royalty indulged

George III – who favoured Weymouth – reputedly used an octagonal beach hut with the royal crest above the door. It was still in use until WWI.

The Prince Regent bathed in Brighton – although getting a horse and hut down that stony beach must have been a lot trickier.

Disappointingly, he didn’t have one built to match his domed Pavilion.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria both used bathing machines on the Isle of Wight. Queen Victoria used her machine for sketching and bathing, a fact she mentioned in her diary in July 1847.

After her death, her bathing machine was used as a chicken coop.

Modesty, modesty, all is modesty

In those early days men – mostly – bathed in the nude. Unsurprisingly, the sexes were strictly segregated with separate beaches for men and women.

This notice is from the 1880s. [Click to enlarge if you want to read the warning…]

It couldn’t – well didn’t – last

The legal segregation of male and female beach-goers officially ended in 1901, after which the bathing machine fell out of use.

For a while, bathing machines remained parked at numerous beaches as stationary changing huts.

These were the forerunners of today’s beach hut. A place to store your chairs and windbreaks, the children’s buckets and spades. Somewhere to have a snooze and to eat your picnic when it rained. (Although the illustration shows hut on a German beach.)

Picture postcard history

In her book, Kathryn Ferry paints a picture postcard view of the classic British seaside holiday through the history of beach huts and bathing machines.

It’s a celebration of the beach hut, from its role providing modesty for bathers, to its status as a much-loved and sought-after structure for today’s holidaymakers.

Back to the brainstorming session and our beach huts

First things first. We needed a location for our beach huts. We settled on the kind of small, fading seaside resort somewhere in the south of England remembered from childhood. Somewhere with a pier, a carousel, municipal gardens with a flower clock. Somewhere with a shop to buy buckets and spades. And a stall that sold ice creams.

It needed a name.

I confess that by this time wine had been taken. I have no recollection of who came up with the name, Little Piddling.

Believe me, dear reader, there are no lengths – or should that be depths? – to which the writerly imagination cannot go when given free rein with such a gift. The river (the Piddle), the ale (Prime Piddle)…
It went on and on.

Honestly, if we weren’t actually rolling on the floor laughing, it was a close run thing but by the time we said goodnight we had a backstory and a plan. Each of us was going to write out of our comfort zone. A challenge? You could say that.

Beach Hut Surprise

It all began with the rivalry with Much Piddling back at the beginning of the 20th century.

Sarah Mallory abandoned the Regency for the early twentieth century and some very dodgy doings in the Council Chamber in Grand Designs for Little Piddling.

Sophie Weston followed up with Going Home? and the arrival of something not quite of this earth in the 1970s.

Crime writer, Lesley Cookman’s contribution is A Body at Satis House but, in this novella, Libby Sarjeant is a long way from Steeple Martin and her loonies.

My own contribution, Past Echoes, is about buried memories, secrets and a confrontation with an unexpected squatter.

Eight-year-old William, visiting the family beach hut in the middle of the night, comes face to face with “something of the night”. And no, it wasn’t Michael Howard that Joanna Maitland had in mind when she wrote I, Vampire.

Finally, in Grapes & Ale, Louise Allen’s main character, struggling to keep her brewery afloat, is confronted by a naked man who’s slipped through time.

Discover more about these surprising visitors to our beach huts by downloading Beach Hut Surprise, which is available at Amazon and is FREE to read on Kindle Unlimited.

Liz