Fresh Air and Fun: The story of a Blackpool holiday camp
Bertha Wood`A wonderfully evocative glimpse of a great British institution' So says Jimmy Perry (co-creator of Hi-de-Hi!) about first-time author Bertha Wood's story of the pioneering Blackpool holiday camp she started with her husband in the 1930s. And what an institution it was – there are millions of people in the UK and beyond who remember with huge affection and a great big smile just how much fresh air and fun there was to be had on a good old British seaside holiday.
This unique book is a real treat of a tale, telling of life, work and general tomfoolery in the running of a small-scale holiday business in Blackpool during the forties and fifties. Ivy House Holiday Camp ran on a mixture of hard graft, innovation, optimism and old fashioned customer service, all with the personal touch. They snooped on Butlin's at Skegness for ideas about chalet building and general layout, but their aim was always to offer a less frenetic, more easy going holiday.
The entertainment was organised by Bertha's `cheerful prankster' husband Fred, who used his considerable charm to build contacts with famous names such as Violet Carson and Mary Hopkin, as well as becoming involved with the Miss Blackpool contests. There were themed show nights, Hi-de-Hi!-style all-round performers and trips to Blackpool, the Winter Gardens and even, unusually for holiday camps at the time, the Lake District. Visitors came back year after year and new business came primarily from word-of-mouth advertising.
`As a portrait of life in Blackpool and in a holiday camp of the period, the book is full of detail – and quite a few humorous revelations ...' Daily Express
`Holiday camps were a great institution in the thirties and particularly in the late forties and fifties. Butlin's and Pontin's come immediately to mind when thinking of that period, huge organizations devoted to providing holidays for ordinary working people. Bertha Woods' Fresh Air and Fun throws light on the pioneering work of the more personal, family-run camps that offered a complete holiday very cheaply at the smaller end of the market. She started a camp in tents in their large back garden and worked for 20 hours a day so that people could have a whale of a time for very little money. And they came back year after year, watching the enterprise grow and adapt. How did she do it? It makes fascinating and moving reading. David Croft, co-creator of the hit BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi.
'First-hand accounts of the pioneering days of the holiday camp movement in Britain are rare indeed, so it is a delight to have such vivid recollections from one of the founders.' Colin Ward, co-author of Goodnight Campers! The history of the British holiday camp.
Now £2.95
