Wooden hut painted in candy stripes
Gallery: colourful beach huts in Whitstable and Broadstairs

Gallery: colourful beach huts in Whitstable and Broadstairs

Brightly coloured beach huts are a quintessential part of the British seaside. Along with ice cream, sandcastles, fish and chips and the unpredictable weather they evoke childhood memories for many of us of summer by the sea.

Beach huts as a feature of our seaside date from the early years of the twentieth century. Before then, bathing was a complicated affair. People used bathing machines to change into their swimwear; the machines (small huts on wheels) were then towed out to see so that the bather could enter the water directly. Often, for extra modesty, men and women bathed on separate beaches.

When in the Edwardian period it became acceptable to bathe directly from the beach many of the old bathing machines were left abandoned on the beaches. But even then changing on the beach was frowned upon. It could result in a fine, even if decency was preserved under a mac or similar – known as ‘Macintosh bathing’. So local councils provided beach huts to change in, hired by the day, and an English institution was born! Some enterprising people repurposed the abandoned bathing machines, removing the wheels to turn them into beach huts.

Beach huts today

The beach huts of today can be bought or hired and are so popular that in some areas they can cost more than a small house! People use them as a base for a day by the beach: somewhere to boil a kettle for tea; eat a picnic if it’s damp or chilly (or both!); change for a swim and back into dry clothes; and in the evening enjoy a glass of wine watching the sunset.

Many are painted in cheerful colours and decorated with motifs that reflect the tastes of their owners. On a recent visit to Kent I became pretty much obsessed with photographing the brightest and most interesting of them. Here’s my selection of the colourful beach huts of Whitstable and Broadstairs.

The selection of my favourites above is posted in response to the Thursday Doors challenge.

I last visited Kent in 2020 – most of my photos were taken then, a few in 2015

20 thoughts on “Gallery: colourful beach huts in Whitstable and Broadstairs”

    1. But are at their best when the sun shines on them! I agree they are very British, but I was surprised recently to come across another blog post about beach huts in Melbourne, we’ve clearly exported the idea over to you 🙂

    1. Sorry Dan, I only just spotted this in my spam queue (no idea how it ended up there!) Thank you for stopping by, I’m glad you enjoyed these cheerful colours!

  5. My Dad was a bit fascinated at how Germans just changed on the beach here. Funny how different countries treat it different ways. Don’t remember such colorful ones in Brighton when I went to school there but it was a long time ago. 😉

    1. I guess the British tend to be quite conservative and modest. You don’t see these huts in every resort, and I don’t recall any in Brighton, although it’s a very long time since I was on the sea front there. In any case, I think the trend to paint them in these bright colours is relatively new so it’s possible you saw them but didn’t register them if they were on the dull side.

  7. Amazing huts! The colours are great. The 2 or 3 huts that aren’t painted stand out.
    Just thinking I could do that to our garden hut ??? maybe ….not

  9. I enjoyed reading about the history of the beach huts and the earlier mobile changing rooms! We don’t have these in Scotland or at least I’ve never seen any, so the colourful pictures of the rows of huts always fascinate me. Lovely.

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