Torbay Chalet Hotel, Marldon – An illustrated history
The Torbay Chalet Hotel was once a thriving holiday centre near Paignton, once owned by Godfrey Davis, but was demolished for housing in the 1990s
Category Holiday Camps
Holiday camps have fascinated me for many years. They played a huge part in the way millions of people spent their holidays throughout the twentieth century, offering affordable family entertainment, organised activities and a complete holiday experience that has now almost disappeared.
My interest in the subject led me to create the Butlins Memories website back in 2000. Over the following years I researched and wrote many articles covering the history of Butlin’s Holiday Camps, and much of that work can still be found on the site today.
Because so much of the history of Butlin’s has already been documented there, this section won’t attempt to duplicate it. From time to time I may publish new Butlin’s stories that haven’t been covered elsewhere, but my main focus here is on the many other holiday camps that have received far less attention.
You’ll find articles covering Pontins, Warners, independent holiday camps and many smaller camps that have now disappeared altogether. Some were famous in their day, while others have been almost completely forgotten. Many have been demolished, redeveloped or simply faded from memory, leaving little trace that they ever existed.
As with every subject covered on this website, the aim is to go beyond the brief summaries often found elsewhere by using original research, contemporary sources and firsthand accounts wherever possible.
Whether you’re looking for information about a famous holiday camp or trying to rediscover one you visited as a child, I hope these articles help preserve an important part of Britain’s leisure history.
Seacroft Holiday Camp (Hemsby) – An illustrated history
Seacroft may not have the dramatic history of some of the larger holiday camps, but it played a steady role in the seaside holiday trade for almost a century
Wallis’s Cayton Bay Holiday Camp
From its humble 1930s beginnings to its later life under Wallis's, Ladbrokes, Warner's, Haven, and Park Resorts, Cayton Bay grew into one of Yorkshire’s best-known holiday camps.
Pontins Middleton Tower Holiday Camp – An illustrated history
The fascinating history of Middleton Tower Holiday Camp from its inception in 1939, through the later Pontins era and the story of its closure