Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 26, 2025
Ronnie, do look at those funny little wooden houses just beyond us on the esplanade. They take the place of bathing-machines, or bathing-tents, in summer. They can be hired just for the morning, or you can engage one for the whole time of your visit, and furnish it comfortably. Don't you think it is quite a good idea? And people give them such grand names.
Thank heaven, the Great Western Railway, when planning its organised devastations along the beautiful rural region of the South Hams, left poor little Calcombe out in the cold; and the consequence is that those few people who still love to linger in the uncontaminated rustic England of our wiser forefathers can here find a beach unspoiled by goat-carriages or black-faced minstrels, a tiny parade uninvaded by stucco terraces or German brass bands, and an ancient stone pier off which swimmers may take a header direct, in the early morning, before the sumptuary edicts of his worship the Mayor compel them to resort to the use of bathing-machines and the decent covering of an approved costume, between the hours of eight and eight.
This little village has of late been the resort of a considerable number of genteel company, for which bathing-machines and every accommodation have been provided. Here are a variety of lodging houses, a good inn, with convenient stables, coach-houses, etc.
Yes, they were terrible-swallowed up the sands, eggshells, niggers, pierrots, bathing-machines, vulgarity, moonlight embracing, noise, sand, and dust. If you were any one at all you did not stay in Skeaton during the summer months-unless, as I have said, you were so grand that you could disregard it altogether.
Among those I talked to I found a keeper of bathing-machines, a publican's assistant, clerks, shop assistants, three clergy these latter going home for their Sunday duty, and giving their wages to the Red Cross unemployed architects, and the like. I cannot recall any shop which made a greater impression of energy, of a spirit behind the work, than this shop.
"To the best of my belief, it's one of your bathing-machines going home with despatches," replied he. "A bathing machine," said I; "why I thought that they were hauled up on the beach." "That's the Brighton sort; but these are made not to go up at all." "What then?" "Why, to go down, to be sure; and remarkably well they answer their purpose.
The tide, too, seems not to have been up over the waste of sands since we went away; and far seaward stands the same row of bathing-machines, and just on the verge of the horizon a gleam of water, even this being not the sea, but the mouth of the river Ribble, seeking the sea amid the sandy desert. But we shall soon say good-by to Southport. July 22d.
But the most individual feature was the large and enterprising family of "wind stoels" dear, cozy basket-houses for one, like green and yellow bee-hives cut in half, or giant sunbonnets crowding the beach behind the bathing-machines.
The front and back of the edifice were formed of long laths, bent like a bow, and thatched with cocoa-nut leaves, something like the front of some bathing-machines in England.
Of the long line of bathing-machines, one after another was hitched to a horse, and trundled forth into the water, where, at a long distance from shore, the bathers found themselves hardly middle deep. September 19th. The wind grumbled and made itself miserable all last night, and this morning it is still howling as ill-naturedly as ever, and roaring and rumbling in the chimneys.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking