Welcome to this episode of Light Travels, snippets of travel and tourism from the 1930’s. In this and the next few posts, looking at the buildings in which youth hostels created a new tourism.
Quality has been driving change in tourism for as long as I can remember. VisitEngland schemes and others like them measure quality. But early youth hostels at their beginning avoided all that. “Standardisation was studiously avoided in favour of experiment in equipment and of sympathy of local colour and tradition.” [1]
They made tourism new, from home made, old stuff, and garden furniture, using anything that worked.
A little list
YHA expected little for their new hostels. In March 1931 YHA told the owner of a prospective hostel “…all we should ask you to provide would be simple beds and blankets: each member would be expected to bring his or her own sheet bag… “[2]
Three months later that expectation changed. But when YHA listed requirements for an ideal hostel, no one called them standards, no one spoke about quality, and the list was already too late because hostels were open and no one had checked what they provided.
Kettles and more
2-tier beds, horsehair mattresses, and three blankets for each bed were essential.
Hard backed chairs and wicker armchairs, exactly the number of seats for the number staying were enough with three tables.
Hard brush, soft brush, dustpan, bins, and a doormat, the list went on. Washbasins, jugs, fry pans, saucepans, kettles and more. An oil cooking stove, Primus stoves and a washing up bowl.
Beds
YHA saw tiered bunks as standard but youth hostels often ignored that. The hostel at Holmfirth in Yorkshire in 1935 had beds made of half-cartwheels. Nailed wire made a base of sorts. People sleeping in them rolled like balls into the middle, and kept doing so throughout the night.
Youth hostels opened quickly, often without time to find beds. Guests constructed bunks before sleeping in them on Idwal Cottage’s opening night in 1931. Beds at the North Wales youth hostel were hammock-like, of canvas slung on wooden frames.
They were cold. Some were so cold that friends slept two in a bed to keep warm.
Straw
Beds at the purpose built youth hostel at Maeshafn were also canvas hammocks slung in wood framed bunks, and photographs show similar beds under construction at Black Sail in Cumbria.
Bunks were not ubiquitous. Palliasses, mattresses stuffed with straw or other material, on the floor were common.
FJ Catley had “an interesting night“ sleeping on one “but without much sleep” at Langridge, in north east Somerset. Catley never liked sleeping on the floor but frequently did.
Near heaven
Camp beds were also common at youth hostels in the 1930s. Hilary Hughes on her 1936 tour through the New Forest slept on them every night, except one.
She found them uncomfortable on her first night at the Meon Valley youth hostel but, after that, she slept without complaint.
She didn’t sleep in a two tier bunk until Winchester, after staying in three other youth hostels. She and a friend pushed their beds together at Winchester because they were afraid of falling out.
But Lilian Ash, another young woman using youth hostels at the time, had no such fear. She loved a top bunk where she could be “as near heaven as possible”.
Limits
YHA had expected it would cost £72, around £3,600 today, for a completely equipped hostel. That seems not very much. You’d pay that today just for bunks.
The regional group on Merseyside expected to pay £5.50 less, and the Manchester group paid a little more, £82 , to equip three, nearly 40% of its income which largely came from donations anyway.
YHA’s national secretary gave £50 from his own pocket for equipment at Winchester, and Devon and Cornwall spent £70 on equipment at six hostels in 1931 with £26 for beds. Blankets cost £34. £2 went to crockery, less than £1 to curtains, and £2 for cooking apparatus.
Savings
The following year, with 10 hostels open, equipment for Devon and Cornwall’s hostel costs were £150 or an average of £15 a hostel.
Few regional groups paid £72 to equip a youth hostel. They forced down costs because they had to buy equipment before they had earned any income.
That constrained what could be done. The “opening of hostels has been governed by the amount of capital available for equipment” one regional group announced in its annual report for 1931. [3]
Help and gifts
Guests kept expenses down too. They brought their own towels, their own mugs and plates, and their own sheet sleeping bags.
Members and benefactors made gifts of and for equipment. A letter to the local newspaper “resulted in … tables, chairs, and other useful furniture” for a new youth hostel at Oxford [4] and the group in Manchester were “deeply indebted to the Co-operative Holidays Association for the gift of the whole of the equipment at Staple Oak.” [5]
The Cyclists’ Touring Club gave mirrors for hostels. It gave no reason for this generosity. Maybe cyclists were vain or more clean shaven than walkers. Maybe it just seemed an appropriate way to offer help for something they had found lacking at youth hostels.
Wheels and wire
Recycling had its place. At Marrick, near Grinton in North Yorkshire, guests sat on three large bus seats beside the fire.
Second hand beds and furniture were sometimes bought. “The Committee agreed to buy at a nominal charge of 1/- each, 48 single beds, five tables and five armchairs from the [London County Council Hospital], Hampstead, to fit the place out” at Llanilar, near Aberystwyth. [6]
At Winchester, despite YHA’s national secretary and his £50, the warden made a table from an old notice board and trestles. She darkened the common room with creosote and drafted visitors into the work.
And there were those beds at Holmfirth, made from half-cartwheels with nailed wire bases.
Pioneers
Lack of resources made early youth hostels pioneers of sustainability, recycling and reusing wherever they could.
Bank loans could have been a solution but borrowing was used only when no alternative offered itself. The group opening Oxford’s first youth hostel borrowed from the bank but paid the loan back as quickly as possible.
A self help ethos drove youth hostels and that became their style, a hipster fashion for the found and discovered before its time.
They started their new tourism without quality. They showed that more could be done for less, that new could be made from old. But the issue of quality couldn’t be avoided. Quality was an essential that would not go away.
Notes
Image shows early youth hostel furniture, the youth hostel at Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire. Y050001-Kirkby Malzeard 601 300-8 pcY.tif
1. London region, annual report 1931.
2. Y630013 Kirkby Malzeard
3. Y240001- 1931 Manchester Regional Group Annual Report
4. Y260036-1936 YHA Oxford and District Regional Group Annual Report
5. Y240001- 1931 Manchester Regional Group Annual Report
6. Y950001-Llanilar YH Profile