Fresh Air and Fun: The Story of a Blackpool Holiday Camp

by Bertha Wood (Author), John K. Walton (Introduction)

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $5.62

  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. Vividness and good humour permeate this invaluable record of the sort of enterprise about which historians and others would know very little were it not for reminiscences like Bertha's. 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 .