Donkey rides for workhouse kids on a away day and smartly dressed men in suits mingling with women in modest swimming costumes. Striking images show sun worshippers lounging on the beach from the early 1900s right through to the 1930s. These fascinating pictures reveal how swimsuit styles, animals and health and safety on beach has changed.
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| The sun is out and people will flock to the coast during the Easter holidays, Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, 1915. (Photo: Mary Evans / John Maclellan) |
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| Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, in 1932. (Photo: Mary Evans / John Maclellan) |
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| Butlin's holiday camps provided round-the-clock entertainment for residents in a self-contained site, Filey, Yorks, in 1959. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| Women's right shave moved on but still a staple today is the beauty contest. Who's the fairest of them all at Butlin's, Skegness in the 1930s? (Photo: Mary Evans / Pharcide) |
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| Beach at Ramsgate, Kent in the 1920s. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| Young tennis players rushing from the courts for lunch during a junior tennis tournament at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. (Photo: Mary Evans / IMAGNO / Australian Archives) |
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| New Brighton, Wallasey, Merseyside, in late 1940s. The looming building in the background is the Tower Ballroom. (Photo: Photo Union Collection / Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| Showing flesh and the latest fashions in Margate, 1930. Group of women in stylish beachwear - wide palazzo pants with vest or bikini tops - attracting the attention of onlookers as they saunter down the promenade in 1930. (Photo: Mary Evans / IMAGNO/Australian Archives) |
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| Holiday-makers admiring a fantastic sand castle, 1919. (Photo: Mary Evans / Pharcide) |
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| c.1930. (Photo: Mary Evans/ IMAGNO / Australian Archives) |
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| Ball games on the beach in the 1920s. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| Children enjoying the Monte Carlo Rally electric car ride at Dreamland Amusement Park, Margate in 1938. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| A group of women campers about to participate in one of the myriad amusements put on at Butlin's - a wooden horse race at the Skegness camp, 1930s. (Photo: Mary Evans / Pharcide) |
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| A children's church service on the sands at the seaside - possibly at Llandudno, North Wales, 1902. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| A party of adults and children from the Aston Union workhouse cottage homes on holiday in Rhyl, Wales. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library / Peter Higginbottom Collection) |
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| Cartwright's Great Wheel in Skegness, Lincolnshire. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| Bathers at Bournemouth in 1927 form a very British (and hence a very orderly) queue as each await their turn on the water chute. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
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| Children fish for shrimps in the rock pools on Hunstanton beach in Norfolk in 1905. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library) |
