Although I am not a member of the British Association for Local History I get a copy of their Journal published four times each year because they offer a good public liability insurance policy for small interest organisations, two of which I am a member. The six articles in each are generally thorough, very professionally written and can relate to any part of the country. In the latest edition, November 2024, one of the articles entitled ‘Republics of Leisure: inter-war bungalow towns and holiday camps on the Yorkshire coast’ and I am pleased to note that it credited the article on page three of my website entitled ‘Aldbrough cliff-top hutment colony’. Th e article dealt with a number of such sites between Scarborough and Bridlington and along the Holderness coast between Bridlington and Spurn Point, some of which developed as commercialised holiday camps such as at Filey.
I remain happy with my article, it being one of my first. It involved correlating early O.S. map evidence with local authority source material. The site of the Aldbrough Hutment colony has suffered from the rapid marine erosion along the Holderness coast so that 90% of the hutments I saw on my first visit years ago have been lost to cliff erosion. Indeed it is a few years since I have been to the site so am not sure of the current situation.
A similar ‘colony’ not mentioned in the article as it is/was not on the Yorkshire coast is at Cleethorpes, North-East Lincs. This has not suffered to the same extent from coastal erosion although many of the original rustic hutments have been gentrified and extended.
The coastal strip of the Wash between Heacham and Hunstanton is another area of unplanned (originally) hutment development, now much gentrified. There are lots of other examples of coastal hutment developments, mostly between the Wars and particularly along the coast of the English Channel but here examples, although well documenyed, are less well known to me.