This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford.  The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as...

This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford.  The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a cameraman for the northern region.  C.H. Wood specialised in aerial photography and filmmaking.  Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses, used by the Dambusters, and for which he too earned an OBE.  His sons, David and Malcolm Wood, took over the company, which was for a time known as ‘Wood Visual Communications.’ The company closed down in 2002.  See the Context for The Magnet Cup 1960 for more on C.H. Wood. 

Twenty years earlier than this film C.H. Wood made another film sponsored by Wallace Arnold, Wallace Arnold: Nice People to go with (1977).  There is also a similar film made by Mansell Beard, Where and What to See in the Yorkshire Dales (1972).

The film has an interesting beginning with the titles written in the sand and then washed away, perhaps inspired by the classic 1930 film Her Man, made before the so-called ‘Hays Code’ Hollywood censorship rules which cut out anything considered ‘immoral’.  It then proceeds with a comic send up of the idea that ‘a woman's place is in the home’, with the housewife heading off for an outing without her husband (although one woman still has to ask her husband for money!).  It is often claimed that the so-called “second wave feminism” was sparked by the American writer and activist Betty Friedan when she published The Feminine Mystique in 1963.  Yet before then feminist academics Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein were exploring the position of women after the end of the war, as in Women's Two Roles: Home and Work, published in 1956, calling for better child care and more domesticated husbands.  The female commentary in this film, however, is more reminiscent of Maria Bird and Annette Mills, the voices behind such classic BBC children’s programmes of the period as Muffin the Mule and The Woodentops.

The day trip out doesn’t seem to have got much of a look-in among the vast body of academic writing about leisure.  The rather meagre and uninformative entry in The Encyclopedia of Leisure and Outdoor Recreation seems more concerned with its market aspects than its social or cultural import (a characteristic of most of this literature).  Of course, famously, it was the coming of the railways that led to the huge growth in days out to the seaside for working class families.  It was Thomas Cook who saw the great potential of the day out, or excursion, starting his Cook’s tours to the seaside in 1845.  By 1848 there were 100 million railway passengers.  Hobsbawn notes that by 1870 there were 170,000 rentiers (ie those not needing to work for a living) taking the train to the seaside, a good many single women (cited in Fred Inglis, p. 46).  The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 greatly increased these day excursions.

The day out by coach can be traced back to before the First World War, when motor charabancs were used mainly for day trips, as they were not comfortable enough for longer journeys, and were largely replaced by motor buses in the 1920s.   Day trips could make up for those who couldn’t afford to have a holiday: not even having to pay for accommodation. Thus, in 1949 a nationwide Social Survey found that almost half the population had not had a holiday away from home – despite the Holidays with Pay Act of the previous year, which gave every employed adult a fortnight off with pay.  Yet half of those who hadn’t had a holiday did have a day trip out.  Most destinations were seaside resorts.  By the mid-1950s coach travel was as equally popular as travelling by car or train: they were convenient in being picked up, and cheaper.   

Wallace Arnold was one of the UK's largest holiday motor coach tour operators.  It was formed in Leeds in 1912, named after its founders Wallace Cunningham and Arnold Crowe.  In his book on Wallace Arnold, Roger Davies described them as being early excursion pioneers, operating out of Yorkshire but becoming a national enterprise.  By 1980 Wallace Arnold operated 290 coaches from its headquarters in Leeds.  In 2005 they merged with Shearings to become WA Shearings.  In 2007 the Wallace Arnold name was dropped and now the company is known as Shearings Holidays. Those who take an interest in coaches of the period, such as the one that appears in this film, will know that the variation in bodywork was due to the modifications carried out by their in-house bodybuilder Wilks and Meade.

Scarborough has long been a major resort for the day tripper, going back to the early days of Thomas Cook.  David Kynaston describes some of the attractions for the annual 2 million visitors to Scarborough at this time (three-quarters of whom coming from Yorkshire): “Corrigan’s Fair, the Spa’s dance halls, cafes and bandstand, Tom Perry’s Aquatomics in the huge swimming pool at the far end of the South Bay, and the twice weekly packed terraces of the Open Air Theatre, with some 8,000 watching shows like The Desert Song.” (p. 216)  By the late 1950s though it was beginning to experience competition from the package holiday, to the somewhat warmer climes of Spain in particular.  Hence it sought to promote itself, as in the Corporation of Scarborough commissioned film Having A Wonderful Time, made soon after this film in 1960.  The Context for this film has more on Scarborough as a holidaying destination.

This film certainly captures the freshness of going to the seaside in the decades immediately after the end of the Second World War; before, some believe, many become somewhat tatty   British filmmaker Harold Baims, born in Leeds, also captured some of this period atmosphere in his Britain on Film, made up of a compendium of short films, mainly from the Rank Organisation ‘Look At Life’ series shown in Odeon and Gaunt cinemas from 1959 to 1969, and recently aired in BBC  – another is Butlins Skegness (1957).  Now, according to Natural England, only about one per cent of day trips involve ‘visiting the beach, sunbathing or paddling in the sea’.  This compares to 18 per cent involving ‘walking, hill walking or rambling’.  In 2011, Scarborough, along with five other coastal resorts, was among the ten local authorities with the highest rate of insolvency per head of population.

Stephen Page and Joanne Connell define leisure as the time, activities and experience that are derived from non-working, and characterised by a certain freedom.  Whatever the drawbacks many might see in the organised coach day trip, especially for the more adventurous younger generation, the coach excursion did, and still does, allow for a relatively hassle free break.  It must have been particularly liberating for women to go out on their own with just their handbag, and with other women friends, as the “harassed housewife” does in this film.  What is more, they gave free reign to all the British eccentricities affectionately sent up by the Beatles in their 1967 film, Magical Mystery Tour.    

References

Stewart Brown, Holidays by Coach: Illustrated History of Wallace Arnold, Past & Present Publishing, 2009.

Stephen J. Page and Joanne Connell, Leisure: An Introduction, Pearson Education, 2010

Roger Davies & Stephen Barber, Wallace Arnold - Glory Days,  Ian Allan, 2007

Roger Davis & Stephen Barber, Wallace Arnold Days, Ian Allan Publishing, 2010.

Fred Inglis, The delicious history of the holiday, Routledge, 2000.

 John Jenkins and John Pigram (editors),The Encyclopedia of Leisure and Outdoor Recreation, Routledge, 2003.

David Kynaston, Family Britain: 1951-57, Bloomsbury, London, 2009.

Vivianne Ventura- Dias Fuente, ‘Notes on the Care and the Dynamics of Households’: IAFFE 2011 (International Association for Feminist Economics)

John K. Walton, The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century, Manchester University Press, 2000.

Old Bus Photos

Britain On Film, Televisual

Mystery Tour: History

Dan Atkinson, ‘We're all going bust beside the seaside: The decline of British resorts from havens of fun to capitals of bankruptcy.’

Tom Geoghegan, ‘Why we didn't like to be beside the sea’