Early Days
Memories of holidays
The impression of memory is that when I was a child we went on holiday every year to Bridlington during Whit week. We were taken there, the six of us
— Mum and Dad, Nanny and Grandad Cooper, Steven and I — in a big black taxi driven by Mr. Armstrong, who lived at Anchorsholme near Cleveleys, to a boarding house run by Mr. and Mrs. Yeaman, who had a black Labrador retriever called Monty. Mr. Yeaman would go to the newsagent’s every morning for the newspaper, and Monty would carry it back in his mouth. Mrs. Yeaman cooked the food that we provided for ourselves, so one of my memories is of traipsing round the shops during our time there.
14 St. Hilda Street, Bridlington, the location of the former boarding house
Screen-capture from Google Street View Image capture: Sep 2018 © 2021 Google
Perhaps the memory of holidays being during Whit week comes from being at school — particularly primary school, when the week following Whit Sunday was a mid-term holiday. Sometimes, when I was at grammar school, the holiday at Whit was for less than a week, and I am not sure then when we went on holiday.
But against there being holidays in Bridlington every year, I remember talk of a holiday on the Isle of Man and of two at Middleton Towers holiday camp in Morecambe or Heysham. (During one of these I won a “bonny baby” competition.) And I myself remember that one year
— early on, but after we moved from Preston to Thornton
— we went to Scarborough instead of Bridlington, and also did the same later on. And there were three holidays that I remember we had at Butlin’s holiday camps, the first and third at Pwllheli, and the second at Filey.
In 1959 Dad got his first motorbike and sidecar, registration “AYO 451”; and it was only a few months afterwards that he got the second, bigger one, registration “KRN 305”, with the more roomy
Busmar sidecar. It was then that we started to go on second holidays — without Nanny and Grandad, just Mum and Dad, Steven and I — touring mainly the Peak District, using as our base Auntie Monica and Uncle Clifford’s house in Sheffield.
The holiday on the Isle of Man, it turns out, occurred before I was born — though after Steven was born—in July 1949.
Holidays, listed by date
July 1949 — Isle of Man
The Cooper Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “Holiday in the Isle of Man was in July 1949.”
1950 — Bridlington?
The Cooper
Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “Nanny and Grandad Cooper appear on a
photograph with ‘Bridlington 1950’ printed underneath. But did we all go on
holiday on that occasion? I would only be a day or two old at Whit, or a couple
of months old, say, in July
1951 — Middleton
Towers?
I have seen a photograph taken at the bonny baby
competition at Middleton Towers holiday camp, in which my Mum is carrying me but I am not a newborn baby, so I assign this to the first holiday there and date it summer 1951.
1952 — Middleton
Towers?
I have a photo of me in a paddling pool at Middleton Towers, in which I appear to be about two years old, so I assign this to the second holiday there and date it summer 1952.
1953 —
Bridlington?
I don’t think I can be older than three in this photo of me wearing a sun-hat, with my flat-capped Grandad Cooper holding my hand, and my pipe-smoking Dad linking arms with his mother, my Grandma Cooper, behind.
I may be slightly older in this photo of me riding a seaside donkey. It’s my Grandad’s turn to be smoking a pipe (an activity which seems more typical of him than of my Dad, who more
regularly smoked cigarettes). We seem to be attired for colder weather than in the first photo.
1954 —
Bridlington
The Cooper Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “There are holiday photos of our Steve, with ‘Bridlington 1954’ printed at the bottom.”
1955 —
Bridlington?
July 1956[i]
— Scarborough
- [i] Whit week in 1956 was 19–26 May, which may have been considered too early for summer
holidays.
The Cooper Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “There are a number of photos, with ‘Scarborough, July 1956’ written in Mum’s hand on the back, covering going to ‘Treasure Island’: Steve with Long John Silver on the Hispaniola, both of us with Ben Gunn, and me with a goat. There are also 2 certificates saying we’d hunted treasure there, and a fake gold doubloon which I think Steven dug up.”
I have a photo of Steve, Mum and me with “Ben Gunn” on Treasure Island.
And there’s one of me standing with a goat.
?8–15 June 1957 — Bridlington?
?24–31 May 1958 — Butlin’s, Pwllheli
The Cooper Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “There are thank-you letters from Steve and me to Nanny and Grandad Paine dated ‘10th June’. Steve’s is written in ink; mine is joined-up writing in pencil.
I learned joined-up writing in Class 4 (Sept. 1957 – July 1958) and started using ink in
Class 3 (Sept. 1958 – July 1959), so I have dated the letters 10 June 1958. Nanny and Grandad had been on holiday in Germany and had brought back a musical roundabout which played an abridged Brahms’ Lullaby, so that was the occasion of the thank-you notes. In my letter I mentioned having been to Pwllheli, so that was presumably when we first went to the Butlin’s holiday camp there. We subsequently, I think, went to Butlin’s, Filey, and after that back to Pwllheli. Nanny and Grandad sent a postcard from Germany to us ℅ Butlin’s, Pwllheli, but the postage stamp with the postmark’s date has been removed; I have dated this 1958 on the basis of the above evidence.”
This photo of me riding a carousel horse was probably taken at Butlin’s. I remember that on one holiday, I spent hours and hours on more than one day in repeat rides of a horse named “Porthole” — but this is not that one.
Another Butlins photo shows me apparently emerging from the outdoor pool, though I don’t appear to be wet.
Just as with the holidays in Bridlington and Scarborough, we’d have been taken to Butlin’s, Pwllheli, by Mr. Armstrong in his taxi. One of the places en route has stuck in my memory (perhaps we stopped there briefly): Betws-y-Coed. We had no idea how to pronounce Welsh names, so said “Betsy Coid”. Similarly, Pwllheli became “Puff Elly”.
It was while we were on holiday at Butlin’s, Pwllheli, that we had a journey on the narrow-gauge (1' 11½")
Festiniog[ii]
Railway, presumably starting from Portmadoc,[iii]
the station nearest to Pwllheli. The name “Portmadoc”, like “Betsy Coid”, would have been already known to us from the taxi ride to Butlin’s. The train ride took us as far as Tan-y-Bwlch, before returning. The line originally ran from Portmadoc to Blaenau Ffestiniog, but by 1958 had only been restored as far as
Tan-y-Bwlch.[iv]
-
[ii] Festiniog — to use its English spelling; it’s now usually given its Welsh spelling “Ffestiniog”.
[iii] Portmadoc — so it was spelled until 1974, when it was renamed with the Welsh spelling “Porthmadog”.
[iv] This information applies, even if the trip on the Festiniog railway didn’t occur till our second visit to Butlin’s, Pwllheli, in 1960, for the line wasn’t extended to Dduallt till 1968. Between Dduallt and Tanygrisiau a deviation had to be constructed in order to avoid the Ffestiniog hydro-electric power station and its reservoir
(Llyn Ystradau), the creation of which flooded part of the line. This was completed in 1978; and it was from Tanygrisiau that Janet and I travelled on our holiday in July 1980.
?16–23 May 1959 —
Butlin’s, Filey
?Jul. or Aug. 1959 —
Sheffield and Peak District?
Letter from Mum, Thu. 19 May 1994: “You are right when you say you were older than 5 or 6 when we went to Monsal Dale — we didn’t get our first motor bike until you were nine…”
The Cooper Diaries, Thu. 5 June 1997: “More information: It was in 1959 that Dad got the first
motorbike and
sidecar; and it was only a few months afterwards that he got the second one with the Busmar sidecar.”
?4–11 June 1960 —
Butlin’s, Pwllheli
The Cooper Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “There’s a postcard from Nanny and Grandad Paine from Boppard-am-Rhein dated 24 May 1960. They brought back for Steven and me
poetry manuscript
books; Steve’s is lost, I discovered while talking with him, mine is inscribed ‘Weisbaden
[sic] Germany 25.5.60. To John with love from Grandad & Nannie Paine.’ It contains autographs from both sets of grandparents and from Steven dated (Sun.) 29 May 1960, from Mr. Robinson my class teacher 30 May 1960, and from Mum, Trevor, and Dad 31 May 1960. There are some pages torn out which, I remember, contained some inconsequential autographs from Butlin’s (Pwllheli again?), followed by an ornate one in pencil from Uncle Joe in Sheffield dated 30 Jul. 1960.”
I have a photo of Steve, Mum and me at Butlin’s, perhaps taken at this time—
—and one of Nanny Cooper, my Mum and me.
Dates include Sat. 30 Jul. 1960
—
Sheffield and Peak District
The Cooper Diaries, Sun. 9 Jun.
1996: “…[The poetry manuscript
book] contains autographs… [including] an ornate one in pencil from Uncle Joe in Sheffield dated 30 Jul. 1960.”
I have a photo of Steve, Mum and me on Winnats Pass near Castleton, Derbyshire, perhaps taken at this time.
?20–27 May 1961 —
Bridlington?
9–16 June
1962 —
Scarborough
My dating this “1962”, originally was from my memory of going to a show featuring
Lenny the Lion and, topping the bill,
Helen Shapiro; for one of the songs she sang was
Walkin’ Back To
Happiness, which hit the pop music charts on 28 Sep. 1961. I thought that the show was perhaps at the Spa Theatre. A Helen Shapiro fan-website partly confirms this: her early 1962 tour included 11–16 June in Scarborough (which also agrees my notion that holidays tended to be in Whit week); however, the location was at the Floral Hall.
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