What is the history of beach huts?

Beach huts really started to be used in the early years of the twentieth century. Before then, bathing had been a cumbersome and expensive affair. Men and women bathed on separate beaches and changing for a dip in the ocean was performed out of view in a bathing machine, which was towed a safe distance out to sea before the nervous bather took his or her plunge into the often uninvitingly cold sea water. When we finally dispensed with the bathing machine many were left abandoned on the beach. In the Edwardian era and in the years following the First World War, the sight of people of both sexes in bathing costumes had become acceptable. However, changing in public was frowned upon and could result in a fine, even if decency was preserved under a Macintosh - so called "Macintosh Bathing". Enterprising people made use of the abandoned bathing machines by removing the wheels and turning them into beach huts. Councils provided and charged for beach huts to change in. A few years ago, the beach hut was languishing in the depths of unfashionability. Today it has been swept up on a tide of nostalgia and now takes its proper place as an essential part of the British seaside holiday.

Beach Huts have become the Icons of the British Seaside Resort, even though they come with limited facilities and are small in size. Form of the beach hut can vary from town to town is instantly recogniseable taking their appearance from their predecessor the bathing machine. While many beach huts were former fishermen's huts, boatsheds or converted Victorian/Georgian bathing machines which looked like beach huts on wheels, some of the earliest purpose built municipal beach huts in the UK were erected at either side of Bournemouth Pier in 1909. These beach bungalow's were designed and built, by Frederick Percy Dolamore, the towns chief assistant borough engineer and surveyor. There is a plaque celebrating Bournemouth as the home of the beach hut which is placed onto the beach bungalow 2359 which is a fair size of 7 feet by 7 feet. Today there are believed to be around 20,000 beach huts in the U.K with nearly 2,000 beach huts along Bournemouth beach, around 70% of these beach huts are privately owned.

Beach huts may look pretty humble but their story is closely bound up with the history of the seaside resort, going back more than 250 years. In the nineteenth century no trip to the seaside was complete without a dip in the sea from a bathing machine. These vehicles looked like beach huts on wheels and they could be hired for half hour periods. But bathing machines were not invented by the Victorians, by the time Victoria came to the throne in 1837, bathing machines had already become an established feature of any would-be seaside resort. A whole century earlier, mobile changing rooms were in use at Scarborough, the world’s first seaside resort located on the east Yorkshire coast. It wasn’t long after this that the bathing ‘machine’ was invented to offer greater privacy to those taking a therapeutic dip. Around the same time some of the bathing machines began to lose their wheels and other, purpose-built, day huts began to appear. The last of the bathing machines disappeared with the Second World War and when the beaches had been cleared of barbed wire at the end of hostilities, the holiday makers came back in their millions. The 1950s was the heyday of the beach hut but dedicated fans have been keeping up their huts ever since and today there’s a clear resurgence with spiralling prices and much media interest.

The history of the English beach hut traces back to the 18th and 19th centuries when seaside resorts began to emerge as popular destinations for leisure and recreation. Initially, these early beach huts were simple wooden shelters, erected to provide shelter from the elements and a place for visitors to change into their bathing attire. As the popularity of seaside holidays grew, so too did the demand for beachfront accommodation. Beach huts evolved from basic shelters into more elaborate structures, often adorned with decorative details and personalized touches. By the early 20th century, beach huts had become a common sight along England’s coastline, dotting the sandy shores of popular resorts from Brighton to Blackpool.

The history of our beloved beach huts is more extensive than you may think. Many people think that they were first invented in the Victorian era but they have, in fact, been around a lot longer than that. In the 1700s, doctors began to prescribe the cold sea water as a cure for multiple illnesses. This saw people travel to the seaside to remedy themselves and they’d often bring their families with them. The first type of beach hut was designed around this time and was referred to as a bathing machine. Bathing machines were similar to the beach huts we know today but they were portable and horse drawn. As it became much more acceptable for people to walk along the beach in their swimwear, the bathing machines lost their function but were transformed into changing huts which stayed on the shore instead. Thus, the beach hut was born. Despite beaches being largely unusable during both world wars, the seaside remained as popular as ever in the interwar-period and the public’s love for swimming in the sea came back stronger than ever as soon as WW2 ended. So many images from 1950s feature beach hut and the demand for them has ceased to fall since then.