CREDITON and District Third Age Group membership, for the retired or semi-retired, is thriving.

The group has “gone virtual” during these challenging times and monthly presentations and quiz challenges are via zoom.

This month’s speaker was the highly entertaining Stewart Raine, who spoke about “The Development of British Seaside Resorts”. This talk was much anticipated as the last time Stewart spoke to us he got all the Boniface Centre audience joining in old Music Hall songs!

Stewart firstly showed old photos of Southend-on-Sea in Essex where he used to live.

This brought back memories as I, as an Essex girl, often visited the resort with my family and modelled the knitted swimsuits that were all the rage in the 50s.

These looked great until they became waterlogged and slipped down past your knees - luckily I was only five at the time!

To get the zoom crowd in the mood for what was to come Stewart played us a rendition of “You can do a lot of things at the seaside that you can’t do in town” by a World War One singer called Stanley Kirkby.

I recommend that you look up the lyrics, which include “Mother takes her stockings off upon the sandy shore and shows a lot of linen that she’s never shown before”, if you would like a giggle.

Stewart then told us how bathing in the sea developed from the Ancient Greeks, who bathed in sea water in spas for health reasons, via drinking spa water to John Floyer (1649-1734) who introduced the idea of cold bathing in the sea.

Cold sea water baths were constructed along the coast of Lincolnshire. Scarborough, which was already a spa and became the first seaside resort. This was joined by fishing villages like, locally, Exmouth and Torquay.

The Grand Tours of the wealthy ceased during the French Napoleonic Wars (1795-1815) and, perhaps, the “staycation” was invented.

King George 111 was fond of Weymouth. Bathing machines, from which you bathed in the nude and were pushed under the water by employed “dippers” began to appear.

Not everyone enjoyed the delights of the South Coast though: a grand duchess from the Russian Imperial family stayed in Sidmouth and was quoted as saying the following “wretched Sidmouth, pretty but small... very dull, too isolated without much entertainment”.

Seaside resorts are linear as they are spread along the coastline. Wealthy landowners saw opportunities and developed towns. William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, saw that money was to be made and built Eastbourne where, to this day, ice-cream is not allowed to be sold along the seafront as this would lower the tone of the place.

Ordinary people could visit the resorts when trains made them widely accessible and we were shown some delightful posters used to encourage people to make these trips.

The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 meant that ordinary people had time for such visits. There was, however, a social divide in resorts: the wealthy had areas where the other people were not welcome.

Some existing structures were re-purposed: Piers, which had previously allowed steamers to dock, became available for walking and entertainment; promenades, a form of flood defence then used for walking and “people watching”.

Happily, when this slide was shown, no-one could hear my partner and I singing along to “oh I do like to be beside the seaside” - we were muted!

The wealthy stayed in grand hotels and the working class in lodging houses where the landlady prepared the food you had brought with you. The lodging houses became boarding houses where the food was provided and cooked! We were shown a graph which showed the rapid rise in the number of boarding houses in resorts.

The Holiday Pay Act of 1938 was a prerequisite to a weeks’ paid holiday and holiday camps such as Butlins and Pontins started to spread across Britain.

Caravan parks also became popular with the purchase of affordable family cars but the onset of foreign holidays heralded the decline of the British resorts. However, this summer the British resort is making a come-back, all be it with social distancing and Covid “safe” spaces!

Thank you Stewart for a wonderful talk - hopefully you will be back soon to give us another entertaining and joyful presentation!

Keep safe, healthy and look after all those who need support.

Membership is just £12 per year.

For more information please visit our website: U3asites.org.uk/crediton .

Jo Poulton