How Britain Worked
Page 15
SWIMMING LESSONS
I like to think that we did our bit to uphold the seaside’s saucy reputation there, though that sort of thing would have been frowned upon by the Victorians. They preferred that, in public, there should be no mention of anything of a sexual nature and body parts had to be kept strictly under wraps. In the early nineteenth century, it was common for men and boys who went swimming in the sea, lakes or rivers to jump in naked. Not that many people actually went swimming as very few, including most sailors, knew how to swim. But by the middle of the nineteenth century, it was illegal to swim nude. Men had to wear swimming drawers that, once they were wet, tended to fall down. These evolved into a swimsuit that was like a t-shirt with a pair of shorts attached. Ladies’ swimwear, meanwhile, covered them even more. By the end of the nineteenth century, they were wearing long bathing dresses that had weights in the hems to stop the dress rising up in the water. Even then, no one actually saw them wearing the things as they went into the water with the aid of a bathing machine. This was a sort of shed on wheels that was pushed out into the water, once the lady inside had changed out of her day wear and into her swimming gown. She then emerged from the bathing machine’s seaward door where a canvas awning was lowered so that she could take a dip without anyone seeing her. Even then, ladies would have their own stretch of beach and men swimming within 200 yards of the ladies’ area could be fined.
Quite often, the lady bather would be aided by a female ‘dipper’, usually one of the family who ran the bathing machines franchise, who would dunk her in the water, holding her under for as many seconds as the doctor had prescribed. Eventually, the ‘dippers’ became swimming instructors and the ladies’ costumes became a bit more manageable, but it wasn’t until the 1920s that ladies started to wear one-piece swimsuits that actually allowed them to swim.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the beach at Llandudno was lined with bathing machines, but because these were quite expensive to rent, they were something for the more affluent beachgoer. Those on a more limited budget simply would not go into the water. The rules about separate sections of beach for males and females were relaxed by the start of the twentieth century and families could spend time together on the beach, although it was generally only children who were dressed in swimsuits. Mum and Dad, right up to the 1950s, would remain fully dressed, with Dad in a suit, shirt and tie. If it was really hot, he might take off his jacket but the tie would most likely remain tied. This was partly a throwback to Victorian attitudes, which had developed not only because it was felt improper to show any naked flesh, but also because it was not fashionable to be suntanned. Only those who worked in the fields exposed themselves to the sun, after all. Having pale skin let everyone know that you didn’t have to work outdoors. They didn’t, at that time, know anything about the dangers of overexposure to strong sunlight.
THAT’S THE WAY TO DO IT
There was, in any case, always more to do at the seaside than lounging on the beach. At Llandudno, on the promenade near the pier, there was, and still is, Professor Codman’s Punch and Judy Show. The Professor (and his descendants who still run the show) has been there since he was given special permission by Lord Mostyn to set up his show on the promenade in 1864. Punch and Judy was already a well-established tradition in Britain by that time. The character had started life in Italy in the sixteenth century and was introduced to Britain by an Italian puppet showman in 1662. Professor Codman, who had been a travelling actor, and his wife decided to make their home in Llandudno in 1860. He used scavenged driftwood to carve their Punch and Judy puppets – the family is still using those puppets today. Punch and Judy has become such an integral part of the seaside tradition that Professor Codman’s show remains the only entertainment of its kind that is permitted on the promenade at Llandudno.
This presented something of a problem when we were filming the TV show, because we wanted to show a traditional Victorian helter skelter and fairground carousel with the beach and the sea on one side and the beautiful Victorian buildings along the promenade on the other. We were given special permission to set up on the promenade and I know that people who love Llandudno and go back year after year weren’t best pleased about seeing the fairground attractions there – I hope they took some photos because they’re not very likely ever to see them there again. You might see them in Mostyn Street, which runs parallel to the promenade a couple of streets back from the sea front, as they have a three-day Victorian funfair every year over the May Day bank holiday weekend. And you can’t have a funfair without a helter skelter.
ALL THE FUN OF (BUILDING) THE FAIR
The first helter skelters may well have been built in America, where they are sometimes called ‘tornado slides’, but by the early 1900s they were all the rage at British seaside resorts. The one that I helped to put together on the promenade at Llandudno was about fifty feet high. You can tell why they liked to build them at the end of a pier – people would be able to see them for miles, especially at night when the cabin at the top was lit up. They were often called ‘lighthouse slips’ for obvious reasons.
Our helter skelter was a piece of joinery that my mate Mave would have been proud of. Basically, it was built using a series of wooden panels on frames – a bit like fence panels. But these panels wouldn’t be any good for fencing in your garden. Each one is specially shaped to create the tapered hexagon shape of the helter skelter structure. The panels also have special fittings attached at exactly the right place, to help support the slide that spirals round the outside and the staircase that spirals up the inside. They have to go together in a certain sequence and are all numbered on the inside. Unfortunately, because the whole thing had just been lovingly restored and repainted, the numbers were missing – they’d been painted over. That didn’t put the guys who own the helter skelter off for long. They know the thing so well that they were able crack on with bolting it all together.
There was no crane or hoist used in assembling the helter skelter – it all went together using muscle power. At first, I couldn’t figure out why, when there was a perfectly good staircase inside, we were marching up the slippery chute on the outside. Space on the inside is limited, though, and carrying bulky panels and roof sections up the tower is easier if you can allow bits of them to overhang out into clear space on the outside of the slip. You need good grips on the soles of your boots when you’re carrying a load up a helter skelter slide, and a fair amount of stamina as well. It was all worth it, however, by the time I was able to hoist the Union Jack on the roof at the very top. We then had to try the helter skelter out, sliding down the slip sitting on cork mats. I went down with a cameraman in tow and, even though we didn’t get up that much speed, I could see why the Victorians and Edwardians thought they were so much fun.
The name ‘helter skelter’ comes from a term that has been around for centuries and means ‘in chaotic and disorderly haste’. Helter skelter is what they call a rhyming duplication, like ‘pell mell’ or ‘hodge podge’. Our second run on the slip was done with far more disorderly haste and we landed at the bottom in fits of giggles to find that there was already a queue of kids forming, who wanted to have a go. One little girl dragged her mum up to the top three times and then made her dad take her up again twice! A lovely old lady, aged ninety-two, stopped, took a look at the blue-and-white tower and said, ‘I haven’t been on one of those since I were a lass...’ It seems the helter skelter appeals to young and old alike. The old lady decided against giving it a go, though.
Next to our lighthouse slip was a truly breathtaking 1882 carousel. It was everything you would expect a fairground ride to be, painted in bright colours, sparkling with mirrors and throbbing with music from its organ pipes. What’s more, it was all powered by steam. There was a mighty great traction engine parked alongside it, but that wasn’t what was supplying the power. The carousel had its own steam engine in the middle of the ride that drove the roundabout and lifted its ‘gallopers’, which is what
the whole ride is often called, up and down the country. The traction engine, a brightly painted ‘showman’s engine’, was there to provide electricity.
I was feeling like something of an old hand with traction engines by now and was given the chance to drive this one along the promenade. I had to take it easy, mind you, because all these machines have their own little foibles and this one, called the Prince of Wales, was no exception. It was originally intended for military use, one of several engines that were built for export to Russia where they were intended to be used to haul artillery. No one’s entirely sure why they were never shipped to Russia but I think the date on the side of the Prince probably has something to do with it – 1917. That’s when the Russians were having their revolution, so maybe it wasn’t the best time to be shipping expensive machinery there – not if you wanted to get paid for it at any rate! The Prince was used as an agricultural engine for a while and then, quite bizarrely, in the 1950s, when most other showman’s engines were being scrapped, the Prince was converted into just that.
The number of cheap, ex-army trucks available just after the Second World War made steam transport a thing of the past on the roads, but in the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, the powerful showman’s engine – perhaps more properly called a road locomotive – would have towed the wagons that carried the disassembled fairground rides from town to town. It did the job of a whole team of horses, but it was also part of the show itself. The showman’s engine was more brightly painted than most other working engines, making it a sight to behold as it came trundling into town. When it was new, the Prince would have cost around 2,000 guineas (a guinea being twenty-one shillings as opposed to the twenty shillings in a pound) at a time when most people were earning less than £1 a week. It was an expensive investment for the showman, but some manufacturers offered the opportunity to pay by instalments to ease the pain.
The Prince’s job on the promenade at Llandudno was to provide electric power for the ride’s lights. Some showman’s engines had cranes attached to help assemble the rides, but almost all had dynamos or generators that provided electric power to light the hundreds of bulbs on the fairground rides. The bright lights of the fairground would have been a revelation to most ordinary people in the early 1900s as they wouldn’t have electric light in their own homes. I was shown how to loop a drive belt around the flywheel that was turned by the Prince’s royal steam power, with the belt providing power to the generator. A cable then ran from the generator that sat on top of the front end of the boiler to the gallopers.
We had two sets of gallopers on the promenade. The larger one provided the traditional fairground organ music, courtesy of a restored, steam-powered organ that was originally made in France (as most of these organs were). The ride’s horses were carved to a set pattern but all painted differently and individually named. Traditionally, the horses round the outside are named after the owner’s immediate family, with more distant family names used as you go in towards the middle. They were all looking immaculate and as soon as the ride started turning and the music started playing, it attracted Llandudno’s promenaders like bees around a honey pot. When we wanted to film people enjoying the ride, it didn’t take much to persuade riders of all ages to hop aboard.
The other carousel was a much smaller, hand-cranked affair. I had a go at winding the handle and it was surprisingly easy once you got the thing going. I had to take it easy once we got up a bit of speed, though, otherwise we would have had children flying off in all directions! At one time most fairground gallopers – also known as ‘dobbies’ – used people power. The owners would even get children who couldn’t afford the halfpenny fair to crank the handle that turned the ride, or simply push the roundabout so that others could enjoy the ride. Eventually, they would earn the chance to have a ride themselves. Real horses were also used alongside the wooden ones and the larger of the Llandudno rides had an area of the deck where there were seats rather than gallopers. That area had once been where the animal horsepower plodded round before the ride was converted to steam horsepower.
Maintaining and upgrading the rides was a constant expense for the showman and buying a new ride cost an absolute fortune. A hundred years ago a switchback ride – a carousel where the deck moved up and down and the carriages might spin, as on the famous ‘waltzers’ – could cost as much as £30,000. That really was a hefty amount to pay out back then and probably compares with thrill-seekers at funfairs nowadays strapping themselves into rides that have cost over £1.7 million – all the fun of the fair has never come cheap.
FINISHING WITH A BANG
The last job I had to do in Llandudno wasn’t what you would call dangerous. There was no fear for life and limb like dangling over the side of the pier with a cutting torch – but it was a nerve-racking task all the same. I had to get dressed up in a bandsman’s uniform to play timpani with a band on the promenade bandstand to entertain those out for an early evening stroll. Anyone who spotted a madman up on the Great Orme earlier that day pounding out a rhythm on an upturned bucket with a couple of spanners knows how much effort I put into making sure that I didn’t let down the rest of the lads in the band. I think it went okay in the end.
The best thing about playing with the band was that we were facing in towards the hotels that look out across the promenade. Apart from the cars parked in the street, it was pretty much the same view that a Victorian holidaymaker would have seen. The Mostyn Estates and the local authorities have done a grand job in preserving the resort and although it has grown a fair bit since Queen Elizabeth of Roumania had a five-week stay here in 1890, calling Llandudno ‘a beautiful haven of peace’ (later adopted as the town’s motto), Her Majesty would most certainly still recognise the place. The fact that it has not been turned into an inferno of neon lights definitely appeals to those who come back here year after year. We filmed there in March, not during a traditional holiday period or school holidays, yet finding hotel rooms wasn’t easy as they were all booked up.
The jet age may have turned every corner of the world into extra optional stops on an extended Grand Tour, tempting Brits to holiday abroad, but the good old British seaside holiday still survives and, in Llandudno, is surviving in style.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
From North One Television I would like to thank Neil Duncanson, James Woodroffe and Ewan Keil.
Thank you to all of the volunteers and workers at: Severn Valley Railway, Gayle Mill, Brixham Harbour and Trinity Sailing, The Birmingham Botanical Gardens and Rock & Water, The Black Country Living Museum and GW Conservation, Llandudno Pier and the Great Orme Tramway and everyone who generously gave their time to help make the show.
Finally, I would like to thank the original eighteenth-and nineteenth-century workers who grafted so we had something to film!
PICTURE CREDITS
© Interfoto / Alamy
© Interfoto / Alamy
© Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy
© The Print Collector / Alamy
© Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy
© World History Archive / Alamy
© North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy
© Popperfoto / Getty Images
© Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamya
© Paul Felix / Getty Images
© World History Archive / Alamy
© Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
© Getty Images
© Tameside Local Studies and Archives
© SSPL via Getty Images
© Rune Johansen
© Carlos Boned / Alamy
© Niday Picture Library / Alamy
© Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
© Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy
© Ray Dean / Alamy
© Cromer Museum
© Amoret Tanner / Alamy
© CCI Archives / Science Photo Library
© Picavet
© Images Europe / Ala
my
© Dan Pfeffer
© Holmes Garden Photos / Alamy
© The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
© Lordprice Collection / Alamy
© Interfoto / Alamy
© Classic Image / Alamy
© Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
© Getty Images
© Getty Images
© SSPL via Getty Images
© Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
© BL Images Ltd / Alamy
© Mary Evans Picture Library/ Alamy
© Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
© Archive Images / Alamy
© SSPL via Getty Images
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© Getty Images
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© Wildscape / Alamy
Images (i), (ii), (ii), (iv), (v), (vi) and (vii) by Andrew Chorlton. All other photography by Barry Hayden.
INDEX
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A
A W Gibbs boatyard, Galmpton 127