Holiday camp, in
BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, generally refers to a
resortA resort is a place used for relaxation or recreation, attracting visitors for holidays or vacations. Resorts are places, towns or sometimes commercial establishment operated by a single company....
with a boundary that includes
accommodationLodging is a type of residential accommodation. People who travel and stay away from home for more than a day need lodging for sleep, rest, safety, shelter from cold temperatures or rain, storage of luggage and access to common household functions.Lodgings may be self catering in which case no...
,
entertainmentEntertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...
and other facilities.
As distinct from
campingCamping is an outdoor recreational activity. The participants leave urban areas, their home region, or civilization and enjoy nature while spending one or several nights outdoors, usually at a campsite. Camping may involve the use of a tent, caravan, motorhome, cabin, a primitive structure, or no...
, accommodation typically consisted of
chaletA chalet , also called Swiss chalet, is a type of building or house, native to the Alpine region, made of wood, with a heavy, gently sloping roof with wide, well-supported eaves set at right angles to the front of the house.-Definition and origin:...
s – small buildings arranged either individually or in blocks. Some had three or four storeys, and some terraces of ten to twenty long. Some camps had prefabricated buildings with four individual family rooms with one shared toilet, while some luxury "chalets" had private facilities. In the UK large numbers (some in the many hundreds) of static caravans are termed holiday camps.
History
Cunningham's Young Men's Holiday Camp on the
Isle of ManThe Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
is sometimes regarded as the first holiday camp. However, it differed from the definition above – especially as accommodation was still in
tentA tent is a shelter consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over or attached to a frame of poles or attached to a supporting rope. While smaller tents may be free-standing or attached to the ground, large tents are usually anchored using guy ropes tied to stakes or tent pegs...
s.
Billy ButlinSir William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin, , was a British, South Africa-born entrepreneur whose name is synonymous with the British holiday camp.American Heritage Dictionary 2004, p. 135.Scott 2001, p. 5...
is generally regarded as the man who created the holiday camp as defined above, stating that he was dissatisfied with the appalling quality of facilities available to British holidaymakers. However there were already a number of camps in existence before he opened his first site at
SkegnessSkegness is a seaside town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. Located on the Lincolnshire coast of the North Sea, east of the city of Lincoln it has a total resident population of 18,910....
in 1936.
What distinguished
ButlinsButlins is a chain of large holiday camps in the United Kingdom. Butlins was founded by Billy Butlin to provide affordable holidays for ordinary British families....
was the size of the camps and the range of entertainments available. His primary competitors were
Pontin'sPontins is a British holiday business which was originally founded in 1946 by Fred Pontin. It specialises in offering half-board and self-catering holidays with regular entertainment on offer. Accommodation is usually in the form of chalets. The company once grew to be a major operator of...
(founded by Fred Pontin, first site in 1946) and
WarnersWarner Leisure Hotels is a private company owned by Bourne Leisure Limited who have 13 historical hotels located in various countryside and coastal regions of the UK....
(founded by Harry Warner, first site in 1931). Neither could match Butlins for sheer ambition and by the 1960s and 1970s Butlins had vastly more customers than the other camps put together.
Most camps were by the seaside but some, like California in England near Wokingham, Berkshire were beside a lake and catered for a modest 300 guests. California in England also had the only glass-floored ballroom in the country.
There are usually extensive childcare facilities such as a
crècheChild care or day care is care of a child during the day by a person other than the child's legal guardians, typically performed by someone outside the child's immediate family...
and various
clubA club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal. A service club, for example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities; there are clubs devoted to hobbies and sports, social activities clubs, political and religious clubs, and so forth.- History...
s to keep youngsters occupied, enabling parents to follow their own pursuits.
In addition there are usually other facilities for which a fee is charged:
barsA bar is a business establishment that serves alcoholic drinks — beer, wine, liquor, and cocktails — for consumption on the premises.Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go...
, restaurants,
amusement arcadeAn amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
s.
However, by the mid 1970s the market began to decline as people began to holiday abroad taking advantage of the new, cheap
package holidayA package holiday or package tour consists of transport and accommodation advertised and sold together by a vendor known as a tour operator. Other services may be provided like a rental car, activities or outings during the holiday. Transport can be via charter airline to a foreign country...
s. The smaller size of the Pontins camps meant that they suffered less during this period of decline than did Butlins, having fewer beds to fill.
In the 1980s many camps were shut down, holiday camps seemed increasingly to represent family poverty, lack of imagination and low social standing. People wanted to be seen to be taking aspirational holidays, either in the sun or to see the cultural histories of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an cities. 1983 saw the Butlins Camps close in Filey and Clacton.
However in the 1990s substantial investment in the remaining camps (including Butlins original Skegness site) continued, and new entrants (such as Center Parcs) boosted the quality and popularity of the offering, especially for young families. In the late 1990s two of the Butlins remaining camps were substantially rebuilt and branded Haven – Pwllheli becoming Hafan y Mor and Ayr becoming Craig Tara. Meanwhile the number of Pontins Camps were dramatically reduced with several sold off or redeveloped for housing estates. Warner's had experimented with "Adult Only" camps in the 1980s and gone on to develop hotels (usually in historic buildings) providing hotel type comfort mixed with holiday camp style entertainment. Some of the camps were also sold off in the 1980s, while others were redeveloped into leisure hotels (e.g. Sinah Warren on Hayling Island & Benbridge on the Isle of Wight) . Some of the Warner camps remain in their original form, and are marketed as "coastal villages" (e.g. at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight.
Entertainment
Included in the price would be entertainments provided on site. These would include all or some of the following:
- Ballroom dancing
- Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
- Funfair
A funfair or simply "fair" is a small to medium sized travelling show primarily composed of stalls and other amusements. Larger fairs such as the permanent fairs of cities and seaside resorts might be called a fairground, although technically this should refer to the land where a fair is...
- Table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight, hollow ball back and forth using table tennis rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net...
- Snooker
Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a green baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regular table is . It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white , 15 worth one point each, and six balls of different :...
/ 8 Ball PoolEight-ball is a pool game popular in much of the world, and the subject of international professional and amateur competition...
- Cinema
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
- Bingo
Catering
Holidaymakers would pay a fee for their accommodation and decide whether to go
full board (all meals would also be included in the price),
half board (only the main meal would be included) or
self catering (no meals provided). At the larger camps it was not impossible for up to 10,000 people needing to be catered for. these camps would have two sittings for each meal, usually an hour apart. This could mean that a camp would serve over 200,000 meals per week, all cooked on site. In a typical year in the early 1960s, Butlins would cook:
- 3.5 million eggs
- 100 tons of sausages
- 120,000 gallons of soup
- 1,570 tons of potatoes
- 34 tons of tea (enough for over 20 million cups)
- 240 tons of pork chops (requiring over 8,000 pigs!)
Colour coats
One yardstick of the relative cultural impact of the three companies is that the Butlins'
RedcoatsRedcoat is the name given to frontline staff at Butlins holiday camps. A Redcoat may have many duties ranging from adult entertainer or children's entertainer to stewarding.-History:The first Redcoat was Norman Bradford...
(a sort of hybrid of general staff, entertainer and steward) are remembered more vividly than Pontins'
Bluecoats and Warners'
Greencoats whose uniform was based on the school blazer & tie worn by Captain Harry Warner as a schoolboy are hardly remembered at all. With the growth of caravan parks in the 1970s and 1980s, the entertainment teams adopted new names that didn't describe the 'stripey' style jackets they wore. Most notably were HavenMates and TeamStars.
Famous ex-redcoats
- Michael Barrymore
Michael Kieron Parker , better known by his stage name Michael Barrymore, is a British comedian who appeared as a presenter of game shows and light entertainment programmes on British television in the 1980s and 1990s. These included Strike It Lucky, My Kind of People, My Kind of Music and Kids Say...
- Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
- Jimmy Tarbuck
Jimmy Tarbuck OBE or Tarby is an English comedian. Growing up he was a schoolmate of John Lennon.His first television show was It's Tarbuck 65! on ITV in 1964. He has also hosted numerous quiz shows, including Winner Takes All, Full Swing, and Tarby's Frame Game...
- Jimmy Perry
Jimmy Perry OBE is an English writer, scriptwriter, producer, author and actor, most famous for devising and co-writing the BBC sitcoms Dad's Army with David Croft.-Education:...
– co-writer of Dad's ArmyDad's Army is a British sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast on BBC television between 1968 and 1977. The series ran for 9 series and 80 episodes in total, plus a radio series, a feature film and a stage show...
and Hi-de-Hi!Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom that aired on the BBC from 1980-1988. It was set in a holiday camp during the 1950s and 1960s and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had written Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. The title was the phrase used to greet the campers and in early episodes...
(a comedy set in a holiday camp)
- Dave Allen
David Tynan O'Mahoney , better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, very popular in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. He also became known in the United States through repeats of his shows on public television. His career had a major resurgence during the late...
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