Beach hut

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beach huts in front of modern housing development. Wimereux, France.

A beach hut is a small, usually wooden and often brightly coloured, building above the high tide mark on popular bathing beaches. They are generally used for changing into and out of swimming costumes and to provide a base for informal family recreation. Some beach huts incorporate simple facilities for preparing food and hot drinks.^[1]

At many seaside resorts, beach huts are arranged in one or more ranks along the top of the beach. Depending upon the location, beach huts may be owned privately or may be owned by the local council or similar administrative body. On popular beaches, privately owned beach huts can command substantial prices due to their convenient location, out of all proportion to their size and amenity.

1 History
2 Present day
3 See also
4 Image gallery
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Beach huts at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.

Beach huts started to be used in the early years of the twentieth century. Many are former fishermans huts.

Possibly the earliest purpose built beach huts in the UK were erected at Bournemouth, either side of Bournemouth Pier in around 1908 or 1909. Designed by F. P. Dolamore, Bournemouth's Borough Engineer, they were offered for hire for £12 10s per year. 160 huts, or bungalows as they were styled, were initially built before the first world war. Their design remains unchanged to this day. The Council believes that some of the original 1909 huts are still standing, although the majority were renewed in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, Bournemouth features around 520 huts owned by the Council, of which over 250 are available to hire by the day or week. There are in addition a further 1200 privately owned huts.