Barry Island

Andy Croll

Description

Barry Island was one of the most cherished leisure spaces in twentieth-century south Wales, the playground of generations of working-class day-trippers. This book considers its rise as a seaside resort and reveals a history that is much more complex, lengthy and important than has previously been recognized. As conventionally told, the story of the Island as tourist resort begins in the 1890s, when the railway arrived in Barry. In fact, it was functioning as a watering place by the 1790s. Yet decades of tourism produced no sweeping changes. Barry remained a district of ‘bathing villages’ and hamlets, not a developed urban resort. As such, its history challenges us to rethink the category of ‘seaside resort’ and forces us to re-evaluate Wales’s contribution to British coastal tourism in the ‘long nineteenth century’. It also underlines the importance of visitor agency; powerful landowners shaped much of the Island’s development but, ultimately, it was the working-class visitors who turned it into south Wales’s most beloved tripper resort.

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter 1 ‘Much Frequented During the Bathing Season’: Barry Island and Welsh Coastal Tourism, c. 1780-c. 1860
Chapter 2 ‘That Favourite Place’: Cardiff’s Bathing Resort, c. 1860-1877
Chapter 3 Visitors ‘Mercilessly’ Turned Away: The Island Closed, 1878-1884
Chapter 4 Reclaimed, 1884-c.1890
Chapter 5 An ‘El Dorado Where Soft Winds Blow’: Resort Boosterism Flourishes in the 1890s
Chapter 6 ‘Awake ye Sluggards!’ Resort Development Flounders, c. 1900-1914
Chapter 7 ‘They Sweep Down on the Place and Take Possession of It’: Trippers Triumphant, c. 1890-c. 1910
Chapter 8 Barry-on-Sea? The Tripper Resort Consolidated, 1914-c.1965
Conclusion
Bibliography

Sujets

• Histoire
• South Wales
• Great Britain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786835871
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Barry Island

Barry Island

The Making of a Seaside Playground, c .1790– c .1965 

Andy Croll

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2020

© Andy Croll, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CataloguinginPublication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN eISBN

9781786835864 9781786835871

The right of Andy Croll to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Chris Bell, cbdesign Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham

To Rachel, Tabbi and Oscar

Contents 

Acknowledgements

List of illustrations

Author’s note

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

‘[M]uch frequented during the bathing season’ Barry Island and Welsh coastal tourism, c.1790–c.1860

That ‘favourite place’ Cardiff’s bathing resort,c.1860–1877

Chapter 3 Visitors ‘mercilessly’ turned away The island closed, 1878–1884

Chapter 4 Reclaimed, 1884–c.1890

Chapter 5

An ‘El Dorado . . . where soft winds blow’ Resort boosterism flourishes in the 1890s

Chapter 6 ‘[A]wake ye sluggards!’ Resort development flounders,c.1900–1914

ix

xiii

xv

1

23

45

63

77

93

109

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Conclusion

Notes

They ‘sweep down on the place and take possession of it’ Trippers triumphant,c.1890–c .1910

BarryonSea? The tripper resort consolidated, 1914–c.1965

Bibliography

Index

135

163

201

211

245

257

Acknowledgements 

H AV E A C C U M U L AT E D innumerable debts during the writing of I this book. Various colleagues (former and current) in the School of Humanities at the University of South Wales have helped in myriad ways over the years. A full list would take me even further beyond my agreed word count, but a severely abridged version must include Jonathan Durrant, Bev Farr, Jane Finucane, Tim John, Tim Jones, Rachel Lock Lewis, Darren Macey, Clive Mulholland, Naomi Preston, Andy Thompson, Diana Wallace and Chris Williams. I would particularly like to thank Alan Jones, Gareth Williams and Alun Withey for several fruitful conversations about Barry’s resort his tory. Dai Smith got me interested in the history of leisure in the first place and his interest in this project convinced me that studying Barry Island’s past was a worthwhile pursuit. Special thanks are due to Rob Eva, Scot McNaughton and Steve McCarthy for their encouragement over the years. Steve made sure that I never ran out of pens. I am grateful to the staff of Barry library, the Glamorgan Archives, the National Archives, the British Library and the library of the University of South Wales for all their help in tracking down a wealth of reading mate rial. Julia Skinner at Francis Frith helped locate maps. Paul Johnson, image library manager at the National Archives, provided invaluable assistance, as did James Franklin at the Ordnance Survey and Penny Icke at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Tony Woolway at Media Wales and Chris Adams at theManchester Evening Newshelped with photos of Whitmore Bay in the 1960s. Thanks to Ger wyn Davies at University of South Wales’s Print and Design Department