Everyone remembers the last week of school before the long six week holiday. The teachers seemed more relaxed (and who can blame them?) and some schools held sports days or something similar. For those lucky enough to be going on holiday, this meant packing either for abroad or the UK. The package holiday boom really began in the 1950s, but most families still holidayed in the UK which meant packing for every kind of weather! Butlins opened their first camp in Skegness in 1936 and it is still going strong, but Centre Parcs came here in 1987 and offered an upmarket alternative. If you’re holidaying this summer, we hope you have a lovely time, and we hope you enjoy our exhibition.
This exhibition has been written and curated by Jane Riley the Librarian at The Leeds Library.
British summer time begins : The School Summer Holidays 1930-1980 by Ysenda Maxtone Graham. (London, Little Brown, 2020)
This is the book that inspired this exhibition. As a child who didn’t enjoy her schooldays, the school summer holidays were heavenly. For this wonderfully entertaining book, the author interviewed people from every walk of life and social class including Libby Purvis, Jilly Cooper and Rachel Johnson.
At the beach....
Who made a sandcastle with a moat, and who got buried up to their neck in the sand?
Pavilions on the sea : A History of the Seaside Pleasure Pier by Cyril Bainbridge (London, Robert Hale, 1986)
Blackpool has three, Southend’s is the longest – at a whopping 1.34 miles. Piers were first built in the 19th century and Ryde on the Isle of Wight is the world’s oldest and opened on 26 July 1814.
Personally, I have always been terrified of walking on them, and as a child I would only go on them with my eyes closed and led by my Mum!
Image (right) Bainbridge C. (1989) Pavilions on the sea : A History of the Seaside Pleasure Pier. London: Robert Hale
Now I am a swimmer : Silverdale Holiday Camp : The First 100 Years by Frances McNeil. (Leeds, Pavan, 2004)
In 1903, a scheme was devised to send poor children from the slums of Leeds on holiday for a fortnight by the sea. Starting in 1904, children were sent to Leeds Poor Children’s Holiday Camp, as it was originally known which was near Morecambe – changed to The Silverdale Children’s Holiday Centre in the 1950s.
All the children were given a hot dinner and weighed before they went to Silverdale. In 1906, one boy aged 9 weighed 2st 1½lbs before Silverdale and 3st 1¼lbs on his return two weeks later! The holiday camp was sadly sold off in 2016.
Hear Frances discussing Silverdale Holiday Camp in the clip below.
Mrs Marshall : the greatest Victorian ice cream maker by Robin Weir (Otley, Smith Settle, 1998)
Mrs Marshall became a leading cookery writer in the Victorian period, dubbed the "Queen of Ices" for her work on ice cream and other frozen desserts. Before home refrigeration, her success meant that ice had to be imported from Norway.
Her cookery book included a recipe for "cornets with cream", possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone.
She was granted a patent in 1885 for an improved ice cream machine and she also suggested using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream, a method Heston Blumenthal used in his three-star Michelin restaurant The Fat Duck.
So, we have Mrs Marshall to thank for our Mister Whippy.
Summer reading...
Summer stories for boys and girls by Mrs Mary Louisa Molesworth. London, Macmillan, 1882
Mrs Molesworth has been called "the Jane Austen of the nursery” and wrote mainly stories for children as well as a few novels for adult readers.
She took an interest in supernatural fiction and this volume includes a story called "Not exactly a ghost story".
Image caption: Molesworth (Mrs) M. L. (1882) Summer stories for boys and girls. London: Macmillan.
The Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransom
The series of 12 children's adventure novels by Leeds born author Arthur Ransome, are set in the interwar period and mainly in the school holidays.
Literary critic Peter Hunt believes the books "changed British literature, affected a whole generation's view of holidays, helped to create the national image of the English Lake District and added Arthur Ransome's name to the select list of classic British children's authors".
Our copy of the 2nd book in the series, Swallowdale is signed by the author.
Image (right): Ransome, A (2008). Swallows and Amazons. London: Jonathan Cape
The Famous Five books by Enid Blyton
The first book, Five on a Treasure Island was published in 1942 and the books feature the adventures of a group of young children – Julian, Dick, Anne, Georgina (George) and her dog Timmy.
The vast majority of the stories take place in the children's school holidays and every time they meet they get involved in an adventure.
Blyton's work became increasingly controversial and from the 1930s until the 1950s, the BBC refused to broadcast her stories because of their perceived lack of literary merit. Her books have been criticised as sexist, racist, elitist and xenophobic, but have continued to be bestsellers since her death in 1968.
Fun and games....
The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz (London, HarperCollins, 2008)
For some of us, the summer holidays meant camping. Guide camp was my personal torture. We had wartime canvas tents that weren’t waterproof and no built-in groundsheets. The toilets were a tent or worse, a hole in the ground. Food was anything that could be cooked in a giant pot over a fire, and we were either freezing or roasting!
Image caption (left) Buchanan A.J, Peskowitz M. (2008) The Daring Book for Girls. London: HarperCollins.
The Great Gig Glorious Book for Girls by Rosemary Davidson and Sarah Vine. London, Viking, 2007
Summertime is picnic time, but this elaborate one is a bit different to ones we remember with an influx of ants, wasps, sand in the potted meat sarnies and sticky pop!
Kiss, chase and conkers : The Games We Played by Caroline Sanderson. (London, Chambers, 2008)
As a child born in the 60s, I was out all day in the holidays until it was dark, and my parents never knew where I was! The summer school holidays meant 6 weeks of playing out and games (including been forced to play cricket with my brothers!).
Holiday pictures....
As part of our digital exhibition we will be including a host of extra elements for you to look at and listen to .
Listen to Dr Grainne Goodwin discuss her work on photo albums and holiday pictures in the video below. We discuss the way picture taking has changed over the years and the parallels between old photograph albums from the 1920s and our current age of social media holiday envy!
We also asked Library members and staff to send us their own holiday pictures and memories. You can scroll through the pictures and read their stories below - perhaps you might even recognise some staff from their baby pictures!
Lucy Evans
I think this photo was taken in 1957 when I was ten years old. We lived in Manchester and could not afford holidays but fortunately my mum’s sister had moved to Lowestoft. So most summers we went to visit the family there. I have great memories of the fishing harbour, the broads, the drowned town of Dunwich (I believed my uncle’s tale that you could hear the church bells ringing from under the waves). It was all very different from Manchester streets. I loved the hens they kept but was upset when my uncle killed one for dinner. As an avid pet keeper - tortoises, stick insects, fish, grass snakes, tree frogs, hamsters, guinea pigs but not dogs, cats or birds as my parents drew the line there - plus being well used to country walks with my parents, I had ambitions to be a vet, zoo keeper or naturalist. Of course I devoured Gerald Durrell's "My Family and Other Animals." It had just been published and I was given a copy for my birthday. Lowestoft provided the excitement of lizards and adders in the sand dunes. (I had been entranced by the charcoal burners with their adder in a tin in Arthur Ransome’s "Swallows and Amazons.")
As a special treat we went to Great Yarmouth where this photograph was taken. It was expensive but I so wanted these great birds to sit on my arms that my parents treated me. For some reason I was always cross with the couple in the background looking on and smiling. I think I just wanted to be alone with those three wonderful birds. I can still feel the strength of their feet and the thick warm softness of their feathers. Nearly as good as when I had a huge python wrapped round me at Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoo (“don’t let go of the tail!”) Of course I realise now the dark side of animals and holiday snaps - and I doubt modern zoos allow children and pythons to cuddle up. I did not fulfil any animal career ambitions but I have kept pets all my life (budgies Snowy and Sunny currently amongst them) and will never forget my happiness on the Great Yarmouth pier.
Philip Walker
As an adult I’ve been lucky enough to have travelled on holiday to various places in Europe, Asia and America. However, I took my first overseas trip in 1971 as a small six year old to Lido De Savio near Rimini in Italy. In the early seventies foreign holidays were still in their infancy for normal families like mine so the trip was indeed a novelty. However, what made it even more of a novelty was that the trip from Bradford to Rimini was completed by train and boat, rather than by the more conventional method of flying. The simple reason for this is that my father Eric was a complete train nut.
We first travelled from Bradford to London and spent a night in Baden Powell House which, at the time, was the headquarters of the Scouts Association (another passion of my father’s) where scouts were provided with cheap accommodation when in London. It was a bit of a tight squeeze in one room with me, mum and dad, and my two sisters and brother. The following morning we travelled to Dover to catch a ferry to Calais. Once we had arrived we boarded a train that took us all the way to Rimini. I don’t have too many memories of this train journey other than eating ice cream for breakfast that had been purchased from a vendor in Milan train station. The hotel was right on the seafront, had a pool and a play area which seemed very exotic to us. Unlike the night we had in London we had two rooms – one for the girls and one for the boys. Apparently I was quite a cute six year old and attracted a fair bit of attention from the waitresses in the hotel who gave me extra helpings of sweets etc. at mealtimes. The only word of Italian I learnt was ‘cherry’ as they were delicious and it was all I wanted to eat.
As well as spending time on the beach and in the sea we had three day trips out. The first of these was to San Marino (about 30 miles), but we also travelled to Florence (about 85 miles) and Venice (a whopping 100 miles). These trips were made by coach which was quite an adventure but I think I found them quite a challenge as a six year old boy. At the end of our stay we then made the return journey back to Bradford. The trip was a major milestone in our family as it was the first time I and my three siblings had been abroad. I think this is reflected in the fact that my father took more photographs of this holiday than any other.
Ian Harker
Patrick Gillett
A picture of my cousins and brothers playing in the garden of my parents' house in Bowdon, Cheshire. Also my father and two of my brothers on the beach at Studland, Dorset. I'm not sure I am in either picture, but at the time I will probably have been somewhere reading Rosemary Sutcliffe.
With thanks to...
Jane Riley - curation, text and captions. Molly Magrath - digital. Niimi Day-Gough - digital.
A special thank you to Lucy Evans, Philip Walker, Patrick Gillett, Ian Harker, Helen Holdsworth, Claire O'Brien, Jane Riley & Carl Hutton for contributing their holiday photos and stories.