Holiday at Lowestoft July 1929

The Suffolk coast was a favourite holiday haunt for the Harrison family infact they returned year after year to the Southwold and Lowestoft area in the late 1920s and early 30s.

Lowestoft in the late 1920s was a popular resort with a fine selection of seafront hotels where the well to do Harrison family would stay. A two year old John can be seen playing in the garden of one of the grand hotels on Kirkley Cliff Road on the town's South Beach, finding his feet on the Promenade and with his mother on the beach taking what might well have been his first dip in the North Sea. Father, Victor was a keen sailor and any opportunity to holiday by the sea was appealing

Victor was also a keen cinematographer and drawn to film other maritime scenes of fishing smacks and a sea plane taking off over the beach. The Harrison film collection held in the archive bears witness to many boat trips in his yacht the Elver but this film, prior to Elver's purchase, marks an important event in his son John's life - his first trip in a boat. The family hired a sailing boat from nearby Oulton Broad where little John was allowed to take the helm.