BATHING IN BUDLEIGH

In the July./August 1969 edition of ‘Devon Life’ a Mr Roland Richardson wrote about Budleigh Salterton. His article is entitled ‘Eighty Years On’. He remembers seeing the bathing machines on the beach in his early years which would have been well before the turn of the century.

“The beach has altered little, indeed if at all, except for the manner in which those enjoying themselves there have changed. In my youth people coming down to bathe disappeared as soon as they reached the beach, fully dressed, into the shelter of the curious hutments on wheels, painted in blue and white stripes. I never remember seeing these “bathing machines”, as they were known, actually driven down to the water, which no doubt had originally been the procedure, but after the disappearance of the bather, carrying the appropriate roll of towels, he or she would presently emerge, heavily clad in dark navy apparel, to bob up and down in the waves a few times before climbing back again into the shelter of the machine to redress. There indeed is a change from the beach of today with its throng of near naked sunbathers, the more venturesome swimmers boldly striking out for the diving raft moored at a convenient distance from the shore.

How astonished, and not a little shocked, my mother would have been, sitting on the pebbles dressed in her “neat blouse” with stiff collar and cuffs, her long serge skirt well down to her ankles and on her head a hard wide-brimmed “boater”, as she kept an eye on me while I paddled, and saw that I did not venture far enough for the water to wet my rolled up serge knickers.”

In the same article Mr Richardson quotes a ‘West country poet describing the red cliffs of East Devon as being like “anchovy sauce spread upon toast.’ Who was this poet? Does anybody out there know?


More on bathing machines.

BATHING MACHINES

Of the many curiosities of the Victorian age the bathing machine must rank as one of the most curious. At Exmouth in 1872 there were many of them and they were set down in the sea at shallow depths so that ladies and gentlemen might enter them to landward, change in them, and leave them paddling to seaward.

As upholders of public modesty these local machines seem to have been unsatisfactory. There was of course a strict segregation of the sexes. The ladies’ machines were distant from the gentlemen’s but in some people’s estimation they were still far too close for comfort. One anonymous Exmothian wrote to the local paper calling the beach “ a scene of disgusting exposure and gross indecency.” He, or possibly she, wrote, ‘It seems to me that the men’s machines ought to be further away from those set apart for ladies, and that boatmen should not be allowed to pass close in front of machines where ladies are bathing.” For me this last comment conjures up a pretty, Gilbertian image of a summer’s day and a flotilla of rowing boats crewed by wicked, mustachioed young men intent on causing flutter after flutter among the bathing belles of the age.

Another correspondent wrote, “The bathing machines are only just put down to the water’s edge, and the gentlemen wear for the most part no bathing dress of any description. The result is an unblushing exposure which is disgraceful . The indecency of the thing before numbers of little girls playing right in front on the sand is shocking; and it is a virtual prohibition of all modest women walking that way…”

The amazing fact is that it was only social convention and constraint that made anyone queue for these ridiculous machines in the first place. People were free, then as now, to change on the beach and to swim anywhere they wished and many freely did so. It was the fear of appearing not ladylike or gentlemanly that drove the respectable classes into these dark, poky boxes on wheels.

The disreputable and the poor just stripped off and swam.