ABSTRACT
Most Victorians worked long hours in a variety of places in a factory, at physically taxing domestic labour, on a city street or a farm, at a desk and not always for pay. Before the mid-nineteenth century, holidays were mainly the prerogative of the well-off. Working-class and lower middle-class people had neither the time away from work nor the disposable income to travel away from home. The most common forms of holidays in the early nineteenth century were Grand Tours of "the continent" and trips to British seaside resorts near London. These trips were for health: sunshine, seaside air, and sea water were all thought to be beneficial, particularly to invalids. Holidays at seaside towns became a central feature of British culture. These were a new kind of seaside holiday working-class and boisterous in nature, nothing like middle-class explorations of nature or upper-class commitments to health. Working-class Britons enjoyed their seaside holidays in very culturally specific ways.
