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From bathing machines to beach huts: the evolution of a seaside icon

Over the past decade interest in the humble beach hut has reached new heights with prices climbing to unprecedented levels as a reflection of demand. The beach hut has become a tangible symbol of coastal regeneration but behind its brightly painted silhouette is a history that stretches back to the earliest days of the seaside. Its wheeled predecessor, the bathing machine, emerged as an aid to fashionable sea bathing in the early eighteenth century, offering a private changing room with direct access to the waves. The Victorians subsequently relied on bathing machines as a necessary intermediary between sea and shore, employing them to separate rich from poor, men from women. But bylaws only ever enjoyed partial success and as support grew for mixed bathing in the 1890s, the need for mobile changing accommodation diminished. Tents, bungalows and early beach huts appeared on the sands and as the craze for sun worship took hold during the inter-war years modesty was off the agenda. On the beach or at the vast Modern lidos, Bright Young Things wore tight-fitting costumes and stretched out in the sun. Bathing machines continued to cater for an older generation until at least World War II but by this time the beach hut had already defined its role as a ‘home-from-home’, a place to hide from summer showers and to brew a reviving cup of tea. Indeed it is these simple pleasures that still attract people in the twenty-first century. Despite a heritage of nearly three hundred years, beach hut design has change little. An international architectural competition in 2006 proved that this need not be the case in the future and that these diminutive structures can not only be icons of the seaside but also icons of design.