Back in time at the North East seaside
Nostalgia Editor IT’S summer time and - rain aside - many of us will have been heading to the North East seaside.
We’re lucky here in the region to have some of the finest coastline in Britain.
Golden sands, azure seas, and dramatic cliffs - we’ve got the lot.
From Bamburgh in the north of our region to Saltburn in the south, folk have been heading to the beach for generations.
The traditional seaside experience is woven into our national consciousness.
Ice cream, sticks of rock, donkey rides, sand castles, fish and chips, Punch and Judy shows, saucy postcards and dingy B&Bs evoke images most of us will recognise.
It was in Victorian times when our ancestors first ventured down to the coast for recreation and fresh air.
The 1871 Bank Holidays Act saw workplaces close down on chosen days and thousands began taking to the newfangled railway network and travelling to the seaside.
Whitley Bay, Tynemouth and South Shields became popular coastal destinations as trains steamed down newly-built rail lines that followed the north and south banks of the Tyne.
Working class folk might head out on day trips from factory towns.
Wealthier people might go for a week in the summer, staying in hotels or guest houses, and creating a booming new leisure industry.
To attract visitors, some towns built piers out into the North Sea, while funfairs sprung up in the likes of South Shields.
Not that our forebears believed in the practise of skinny-dipping.
In the straightlaced days of the early 20th century when a glance of naughty bits would have brought on a collective coronary, welloff people paid to get changed in wooden huts called bathing machines which were dragged into the sea by a horse!
Poorer folk, as we can see in some of the older pictures here, would usually swelter fully-clothed on the beach and maybe roll up their trousers for a paddle. (Not many people could swim back then apparently).
Enjoy our selection of North East seaside pictures, dating from Victorian times to the 1980s. Front: Holidaymakers and day trippers on Tynemouth beach in August, 1980