The British seaside holiday and day trip increased in popularity throughout the nineteenth century with the development of the railway. The North East boasts a number of popular seaside towns and resorts, including Tynemouth and Cullercoats as featured in this film, which were becoming easier to reach by rail networks linking city centres to coastal regions. Tynemouth is the official meeting of the River Tyne and the North Sea and is dominated by the dramatic Tynemouth Priory & Castle....

The British seaside holiday and day trip increased in popularity throughout the nineteenth century with the development of the railway. The North East boasts a number of popular seaside towns and resorts, including Tynemouth and Cullercoats as featured in this film, which were becoming easier to reach by rail networks linking city centres to coastal regions.

Tynemouth is the official meeting of the River Tyne and the North Sea and is dominated by the dramatic Tynemouth Priory & Castle. Tynemouth has been a bathing spot since the late eighteenth century with visitors attracted to Longsands, its mile-long stretch of golden sands reaching north to Cullercoats.

Sitting between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay, Cullercoats was traditionally a fishing village and is notable for its Cullercoats Fishlasses, subject of a folk song written by Edward Corvan in 1862. In 1913, Jean F Terry wrote of the Cullercoats Fishlasses, "The Cullercoats fishwife, with her cheerful weather-bronzed face, her short jacket and ample skirts of blue flannel, and her heavily laden "creel" of fish is not only appreciated by the brotherhood of brush and pencil, but is one of the notable sights of the district."

This home movie, possibly made by James Cameron Snr., or his son, reflects a family seaside trip to both Tynemouth and Cullercoats. Cameron Snr. was a founder member and President of the Newcastle & District Amateur Cinematographers Association (ACA) which has been making cine stories and capturing the north east on film for nearly a century. It is the sole survivor of the five original ACA organisations in Britain, first set up in 1927. Newcastle & District ACA were storytellers, entertainers and documentarians – recording simple or sophisticated drama and comedies to travelogues and home movies, of which this is a charming example.

This film dates from the golden age of home movies shot on 9.5 mm cine film. From the early 1900s to the 1960s, cameras became more accessible to the masses which increasingly allowed everyday people to record special moments and share them with family and friends at home. This technology was expensive, particularly before WWII, so was usually only accessible to the most affluent in society. (1) We can be confident the family who made this home movie were part of this affluent set, notably due to the last section of the film where the family socialise in their well-kept large garden complete with private aviary. The family are dressed in fine clothing, with one matriarch sporting a fur stole, and are served an abundant afternoon tea.

9.5 mm film was part of the Pathé Baby amateur system introduced by the French company, Pathé Frères, in 1922. It was initially designed for showing commercial films at home, but a camera was soon produced which allowed people to shoot their own films. This film is silent as optical sound was not introduced for 9.5 mm until 1938, and colour film was not available until after the Second World War. The 9.5mm was hugely popular in Europe, with around 300,000 projectors being sold in France and England, but it suffered a decline after the war due to competition from Kodak’s less costly 8 mm film. (2)

Distinctive in the film are the popular women’s fashions of the 1930s. The ideal silhouette for women during the 1920s and 1930s was slender and androgynous, which the tubular dresses and bobbed hair of the time complimented so well.

Star of the show however are the knitted bathing suits so evocative of the era. During the 1920s, bathing costumes were very similar in style for men, women and children, typically  a scoop-necked, sleeveless, shorted one-piece. They could be hand or machine-knitted in jersey and cotton fabrics which clung to the contours of the body. Design was usually plain but any patterns and motifs were often geometric in design towards the end of the decade in reference to the Art Deco movement. When exposed to water however, the knitted costumes became heavy and warped, so cross straps on the back were sometimes added to provide extra support for women. Some women also chose the addition of a modesty skirt to obscure the close fitting wool around the crotch. (3)

In the 1930s swimwear had improved from the baggy jersey or woollen suits to a stiff ruched cotton known as Matletex and was more decorative than its 1920s predecessor. In this film though, the swimwear we see is more in the 1920s style. Emmy Sale has researched 1930s swimwear and found that a ready-made swimming costume was expensive enough to be inaccessible to the typical working woman, and a luxury purchase for those on a higher income, so it is fitting that the knitted costumes are still prevalent during the 1930s. (4) A two piece costume was only worn by the most daring of women in the 1930s and did not become widely popular until 1945, when it was christened the ‘bikini.’ (3)

This film was made at the height of the sun bathing craze, which began in the 1920s. Throughout history, working people have almost exclusively worked outdoors meaning a sun tan was a marker of the peasant class and pale skin a symbol of wealth and idleness. This idea was turned on its head in the 1920s and 1930s when the majority of people worked almost exclusively indoors and a sun tan became a symbol of the leisure and travelling class and a pale complexion became associated with ill, sun-deprived factory workers. Suddenly a tan became desirable and an aspirational status symbol.

This was also the time when the health benefits of sun exposure, first discovered in 1890, become widespread and a health-conscious population spent increasing amounts of leisure time outdoors pursuing a fit and healthy lifestyle. Bathing lidos and outdoor pools started to appear in most coastal resorts, including at Tynemouth. The outdoor pool was opened in 1925 and its derelict remains exist today.

References

(1) 9.5mm film (1922-1960) - https://obsoletemedia.org/9-5mm-film/

(2) The History of Cine Film - http://www.rutlandproductions.co.uk/history-cinefilm/

(3) Swimwear and Seaside Clothing - http://screenarchive.brighton.ac.uk/portfolio/screen-search-fashion/leisure/swimwear-and-seaside-clothing/

(4) Sale, Emmy. “The 1930s Hand-Knitted Bathing Suit: Cost, originality and adaptation” - https://cpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.brighton.ac.uk/dist/3/4024/files/2018/06/Emmy-Sale_Bathing-Suits-2n6k99d.pdf

(5) To Tan or Not to Tan 1920s – 1930s - https://witness2fashion.wordpress.com/2016/07/24/to-tan-or-not-to-tan-1920s-1930s/