Memory Lane

Book a hotel on the sea front at Filey, have a drink, have a nap, enjoy a non-computerised game, and watch the children have fun on the beach.

All the ingredients of a great typical family holiday of the 1950s on the Yorkshire coast, here beautifully captured. The women from Halifax sit in their cardigans on deckchairs in a semi-circle, watching the children, with help from the dads, making impressive sandcastles. The North Sea might be rather too cool to best enjoy the sun and the sea, but the wide beach of Filey was very popular, especially for the kids who show their great delight with the Punch and Judy show.

This family was made by Ted Warburton, an early member of the Halifax Cine Club, who made many fine films, mainly of family, from the end of the war through to the early 1980s. Filey stands in the shadow of its bigger and better-known rivals, Scarborough and Bridlington, situated as it is in between them. Like them it became fashionable in the mid-nineteenth century, especially with the coming of the railway in 1846. In the post-war period its biggest draw was the Butlin’s camp which opened in 1939, but which closed in 1984.