ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to circumvent the problems inherent in the sources by surveying the evidence for the emergence of mass leisure at a national or macro level. It then explores an examination of leisure opportunities and of the structure of leisure from below, from the perspective of the family life cycle, gender, community and region. The extension of holiday time suggests an increase in demand for leisure, but at the same time it must be recognised that some enforced holidays were in effect unemployment. Urbanisation, improvements in urban transport systems, the application of technology to the provision of leisure and an undoubted if modest and interrupted rise in the level of working class demand, add further plausibility to the idea. The chief inheritance from the past was a concern about the morality of working class leisure.
