Ladies could undress in privacy, and the machines were hauled by horses down the beach and into the water; guided and chaperoned, the intrepid bathers could step discreetly down into the waves. In the illustrations below, we can see bathing women with young girls and children, and a bathing beauty in a glamorous costume is about to step down into the water. In another, a skinny-looking horse pulls a machine down the beach.

Later in the 19th century, mixed bathing became the norm. The diarist the Rev Francis Kilvert detested the custom of bathing in drawers. ‘If ladies don’t like to see men naked why don’t they keep out of sight?’ One day in 1874 on the Isle of Wight rough waves stripped off his drawers and tore them down round his ankles. He was seized and flung down by a heavy sea and left stranded on the shingle. ‘After this I took the wretched rag off and of course there were ladies looking on as I came up out of the water’.

On the beach there was plenty of fun to be had. There were rides on the sands on donkeys and horsesrock-pooling and shrimping, black and white minstrels, fun fairs and rides, brass bands, and Punch and Judy (see illustrations below that you can download from the Victorian Picture Library).

Seaside piers began life as landing stages for steamers offering trips round the bay. Soon they became popular places to promenade, where holidaymakers could savour the bracing ozone and look back to enjoy exhilarating prospects of the coast and townscape. Piers were masterful feats of engineering, elegant and exotic, thrusting far out into the sea with characteristic Victorian aplomb. The Victorian entrepreneur was never slow in recognising commercial potential: modest piers were enlarged to make space for seats, kiosks, bandstands and pavilions. They became fashionable places to see and be seen. By the early 1900s they were the focus for seaside fun, and thousands pushed through the turnstiles to enter a world far removed from their workaday lives.

The Victorians invented the seaside. Many of the attractions that they enjoyed are still being enjoyed today – the piers, promenades, fairground rides, and trips round the bay. We have them to thank for the Great British Holiday that so many of us continue to look forward to today.

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