The Swanley History Group’s monthly talk for April was about the history of seaside resorts in Britain. They had a guest speaker who spoke about the seaside resorts and he brought in a number of photos, paintings and postcards to show us what holidays at the seaside used to look like at an earlier time in history. The images he brought showed beaches, beach huts and piers with adverts to encourage people to visit the seaside from the nineteenth century. There were also a few postcards from the early twentieth century.
There was a particular focus on resorts in Kent, including Margate, Westgate, Broadstairs and more. To encourage people to visit Kent, the railway companies worked together to advertise the resorts with posters as in the 1830s, visitors could take the railway from Canterbury to Whitstable. Although the distance between these towns is only about eight miles, in those days it took several hours because the trains were very slow compared to nowadays where such a journey would only take twenty-five minutes or so.
Many visitors were now coming to seaside resorts, so naturally this lead to a rise in entertainment and accommodation in the area.
In Margate in 1880 a funfair opened; it was built to keep visitors entertained. It has remained popular for over one hundred years and has been reinvented and passed on to new owners several times over the years. It has undergone numerous name changes such as in 1920 when it was renamed Dreamland and this name has remained popular as on numerous occasions it reverted back to this name in the twentieth century. More recently in 2003, the park closed as there was a decline in visitors to the area. However, it reopened in 2015 and it continues to be updated with new attractions to this day.