[The first in our new series of discussions of podcasts of interest to Victorianists -- DJ.]
ong before the Victorian era, seaside retreats drew travelers in search of health, diversion, rest, relaxation, and relief from insalubrious urban environments. In episode 13 of the English Heritage podcast, podcast Charles Rowe joined Andrew Hann, senior properties historian at English Heritage, to “take a dip” into the history of English seaside holidays.
Britons have long sought refreshment by the water. In Roman times, they flocked to spa towns spurred by a belief in the medicinal qualities of hot springs. In the 1660s and throughout the Georgian period, spa towns were revived. In widely circulated treatises, eighteenth-century doctors, such as Richard Russell and William Buchan, promoted the health benefits of drinking and bathing in sea water, spurring growth of seaside towns and the development of products and services to make seaside excursions both practical and fashionable.
Three illustrations from Punch. Left: Scene on the English Coast by John Leech. Middle: Bain de Mer by George Du Maurier. Right: A very natural mistake by John Leech. Click images to enlarge them.
To address social mores around modesty, bathing machines came into use in the 1730s. In these wheeled booths, users could change their clothes and directly lower themselves into the water unobserved. These machines remained popular until the end of the nineteenth century, when they lingered parked on the beach. Queen Victoria famously enjoyed her own bathing machine at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. There, the royal family’s private beach became a favorite source of recreation, as the children collected shells and learned to swim. The property was designed to allow visitors to dock their yachts directly on the beach. When Emperor Napoleon III and Princess Eugenie visited in 1857, they disembarked on the sand before walking a tree-lined path expressly planned by Prince Albert to beautifully reveal the house.
Aristocratic bathers typically rented seaside properties for the season, both in England and abroad. In 1882, the Queen’s visit to the French Riviera helped to make it a popular travel destination. In the 1840s, improvements in transportation allowed a growing number of middle- and working-class visitors to reach the seaside as well. A series of factory acts provided more leisure time, contributing to the trend. Working class “day trippers” took excursion trains, rented deck chairs, and feasted on fish and chips or candy floss before returning home at the end of the day. As a result, some of the fastest growing towns in the industrial era were not factory towns, but rather, sites of leisure, such as Blackpool and Bournemouth. The construction of piers across England peaked in the 1860s, with twenty-two new piers built in that decade alone.
Links to Related Material
- The Seaside in the Victorian Literary Imagination
- Travel, Tourism and Leisure in Early Victorian Illustration
- Seaside Resorts and Spas
- Seaside Piers
- All about Brighton
- Dr. William Buchan
- Factory Legislation: The 1833 Factory Act
Bibliography
"How the Victorians Invented the Great British Beach Holiday," English Heritage, episode 13, June 27, 2019.
Created 25 March 2024