The Seaside Holiday

It began as medicine. In 1752 Dr Richard Russell of Lewes published his dissertation on the healing powers of seawater, and fashionable invalids flocked to take the cure at Brighthelmstone — the future Brighton. Modesty was mechanized for the occasion: the bathing machine, a wooden changing hut on wheels, was drawn into the surf by horse so that bathers, especially women, could change and enter the water unseen. Strong same-sex attendants called dippers helped them through the waves, and the sexes bathed strictly apart.

The railway turned the cure into a holiday. Cheap excursion trains carried mill workers to the coast by the thousand, and the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 gave working people days off to spend there. Resorts answered with pleasure piers, promenades, Punch and Judy shows, donkey rides, and minstrel troupes; Blackpool and Brighton became the capitals of a new mass leisure. Even Queen Victoria kept her own luxurious bathing machine at Osborne, complete with a veranda and every comfort.

The Victorians took the sea seriously and the seaside joyfully — full-body bathing costumes, striped tents, and a bather's little flag raised to signal the driver she was ready to be hauled back to shore. As mixed bathing gained acceptance around the turn of the century, the machines were parked on the beaches as changing rooms and eventually retired. But the template they left — the promenade stroll, the pier, the day trip to the sea — still defines the British summer.