About The Leisure Historian

The Leisure Historian is an independent, non-commercial website about the places where people went to relax, explore and have fun during the twentieth century.

I have always been interested in holiday camps, seaside resorts, tourist attractions, amusement parks and other places of leisure. Many of them once attracted thousands of visitors, yet today they have closed, changed beyond recognition or disappeared almost completely.

What frustrated me most was how difficult it could be to find reliable information about them. Some places had barely been written about at all. Others were covered by histories that were incomplete, contradictory or simply wrong. The same few details were often repeated from one website to another without anyone going back to the original sources.

So I began researching these subjects for myself.

How It Started

Back in 2000, I became a bit disillusioned by the lack of accurate information available on the history of Butlin’s Holiday Camps. That led me to create the Butlins Memories website as a way of bringing together photographs, memories and carefully researched historical information.

What began as a small personal project gradually became much larger than I had ever expected. Former campers, employees, entertainers and enthusiasts began getting in touch with their own stories, photographs, documents and corrections. As the website grew, so did the amount of correspondence and new material arriving.

Eventually, keeping up with everything became more than I could realistically manage alongside work and everyday life. I therefore passed the website on to others, and I now have no involvement with it. But many of my original articles can still be seen.

The experience stayed with me, however. It showed just how much interest there can be in places that are often overlooked by mainstream history, and how valuable firsthand memories and original source material can be when piecing together the past.

Why The Leisure Historian Exists

The Leisure Historian continues that same idea, but expands across a much wider range of subjects.

There are no strict rules about what I may write about. The common thread is simply that each subject relates in some way to leisure, tourism or places people visited for enjoyment.

The first articles are mainly about British subjects because that is where much of my research began. Over time, however, the site may also include attractions, resorts and other places from overseas. If a subject interests me and has a worthwhile story to tell, it may find its way onto the site.

Some of the articles published here have been researched, revised and expanded over many years. A number of them were first written more than twenty years ago. It now seemed like the right time to bring this work together and make it publicly available rather than leave it sitting unseen.

How the Articles Are Researched

Each article is researched from the ground up rather than copied or rewritten from material already online.

Sources may include old newspapers, magazines, guidebooks, brochures, postcards, maps, timetables, advertisements, official publications and other contemporary material. Wherever possible, I also draw on conversations with people who visited, worked at or were otherwise connected with the places being researched.

Much of this work began long before artificial intelligence became widely available. The research and writing on this site are my own and have not been generated using AI.

The aim is not to produce formal academic papers. It is to create detailed, readable and well-researched histories that answer questions, correct errors and preserve stories that might otherwise be lost.

An Independent Project

The Leisure Historian is not a business, a history society or a corporate publication. It is a one-person project created out of genuine interest in the subject.

There are no products for sale and no subscription fees. The purpose of the site is simply to share research and preserve the history of places that brought enjoyment to generations of people.

Corrections and Contributions

History is rarely complete, especially when dealing with places that closed many years ago. New information, photographs and memories can still come to light.

If you have a correction, a personal recollection, a photograph, a brochure or any other information that could add to one of the stories featured here, you are very welcome to get in touch.

Every effort is made to ensure the articles are as accurate as possible, and thoughtful additions or corrections are always appreciated.

Thank you for visiting The Leisure Historian. I hope the site helps preserve the stories of some remarkable places and brings back a few memories along the way.