Barry Island was a Butlin's, latterly Majestic Holidays,

holiday camp A holiday camp is a type of holiday accommodation that encourages holidaymakers to stay within the site boundary, and provides entertainment and facilities for them throughout the day. Since the 1970s, the term has fallen out of favour with term ...

located on

Barry Island Barry Island ( cy, Ynys y Barri) is a district, peninsula and seaside resort, forming part of the town of Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. It is named after the 6th century Saint Baruc. Barry's stretch of coast, on the Bristol Chann ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. It opened in 1966 and closed in 1996.

History

( cy, Ynys y Barri) is a small seaside resort in the

Bristol Channel The Bristol Channel ( cy, Môr Hafren, literal translation: "Severn Sea") is a major inlet in the island of Great Britain, separating South Wales from Devon and Somerset in South West England. It extends from the lower estuary of the River Seve ...

() about 9 miles (14 km) south by south west of Cardiff, ( cy, Caerdydd), south

. Until 1896, when a rail link was completed from the mainland, the only access to Barry Island was either by foot across the sand and mud at low tide, or, when the tide was in, by Yellow Funnel Line

paddle steamer A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses wer ...

. Over 150,000 visitors were recorded arriving one

August Bank Holiday A bank holiday is a national public holiday in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and the Crown Dependencies. The term refers to all public holidays in the United Kingdom, be they set out in statute, declared by royal proclamation or held ...

weekend, mostly by train. Further tourist attractions were developed on the island, and by 1934, the number of visitors to the fairground during the August Bank Holiday week was over 400,000.

Butlins

Billy Butlin Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin (29 September 189912 June 1980) was a South African-born British entrepreneur whose name is synonymous with the British holiday camp.''#refRiverside, American Heritage Dictionary 2004'', p. 135.#refSc ...

's inspiration for his holiday empire came from a less than happy holiday to Barry Island in his youth, when he'd been locked out of his B&B all day by his landlady. He finally decided to build one of the Butlins Holiday Camps at Barry Island. What was to become the last-built and smallest of the Butlins Holiday Camps came to Barry Island in 1965. Billy Butlin took out a 99-year lease on the headland at Nell's Point in 1966. Building work began there in the winter and the gates opened to campers on 18 June 1966. Barry Island holiday camp contained all the tried and tested Butlins ingredients: the famous

Butlins Redcoats ''Redcoat'' is the name given to frontline staff at Butlins holiday camps in the UK. A Redcoat has duties ranging from adult entertainer or children's entertainer to stewarding. History The first Redcoat was Norman Bradford. When Sir Billy B ...

, funfair, early morning wake up with Radio Butlin, dining hall, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, ballroom; boating lake, tennis courts, sports field (for the three legged and

egg and spoon race An egg-and-spoon race is a sporting event in which participants must balance an egg or similarly shaped item upon a spoon and race with it to the finishing line. At many primary schools an egg-and-spoon race is staged as part of the annual Sports ...

s and the donkey derby),

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

and

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sports, cue sport played on a Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets, one at each corner and o ...

tables,

amusement arcade An amusement arcade (often referred to as a video arcade, amusements or simply arcade) is a venue where people play arcade games, including arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers (such as cl ...

, medical centre, theatre, arcades of shops and the Pig and Whistle Showbar. A

chairlift An elevated passenger ropeway, or chairlift, is a type of aerial lift, which consists of a continuously circulating steel wire rope loop strung between two end terminals and usually over intermediate towers, carrying a series of chairs. They ...

system was opened in 1967. There were 800 basic, 'no-frills' chalets, designed to modern 1960s standards, which, on the outside, meant wooden panels and

flat roof A flat roof is a roof which is almost level in contrast to the many types of sloped roofs. The slope of a roof is properly known as its pitch and flat roofs have up to approximately 10°. Flat roofs are an ancient form mostly used in arid c ...

s. The camp continued to be enormously successful throughout until the 1980s, but on 29 October 1986, Butlins announced that it would have no place in the company's future and would close after Christmas, and it did so on 31 December 1986.

Majestic Holidays

The camp was sold to Majestic Holidays and re-opened on 23 May 1987 as ''Majestic Barry Island'' (later renamed ''The Barry Island Resort''). Majestic Holidays' plans to demolish the camp and rebuild the site did not reach fruition though the camp was given a complete refurbishment, including refurbishing swimming pools. Majestic Holidays continued to use the Redcoats until 1989 but they became the Bluecoats in 1991, following Butlins threat of legal action over the name. Maintenance had now become such an issue, especially with the chalet's flat roofs and wooden panelling, that a clause was added to the booking conditions limiting refunds to 20% of the cost of the holiday. Following numerous complaints over the camp, the BBC show ''

That's Life! ''That's Life!'' was a satirical TV consumer affairs programme on the BBC, at its height regularly reaching audiences of fifteen to twenty million, and receiving 10–15,000 letters a week. The series broadcast on BBC1 for twenty-one years, ...

'' investigated. The report aired in January 1989 and the report said "It's Barry Awful, It's Barry Hell" and the presenter at the end said "If you're off to Barry Island this summer, send us a postcard." They did! By the end of the summer of 1989, That's Life had received 8,000 postcards in praise of the camp, with only about 40 complaints. Majestic Holidays' owner, Rick Wright, sued and Majestic received £500,000 damages. By 1996, with storm damage causing more maintenance problems,

Vale of Glamorgan Council The Vale of Glamorgan Council is the governing body for the Vale of Glamorgan, one of the Principal Areas of Wales. It was run by the Conservative Party after the 2008 United Kingdom local elections, taking over the council from no overall contr ...

threatened to refuse renewal of Barry Island Resort's entertainments licence, unless work was carried out to improve the now 30-year-old site. Majestic's now trading company, Insurebowls Ltd, continued through the summer, but closed the camp for good on 7 November 1996, although they had originally intended to reopen the following year.

Closure

The holiday camp site was sold for £2.25m to

, in October 1997, who demolished the camp and sold it to

Bovis Homes Vistry Group, formerly Bovis Homes Group, is a British house-building company based in Kings Hill, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. History Vistry Group was the result of a 2019 me ...

for housing development. Now known as Bryn Llongwr, houses were built on the site between 2002 and 2003, with the remaining two original camp buildings and outdoor pool being demolished in early 2005. On 27 September 2014, the Mayor of The Vale of Glamorgan, Councillor Howard Hamilton, unveiled a

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...

in the new 'Seafront Garden', part of a £3,000,000 refurbishment of the coastline round Nells Point. The plaque, designed and paid for by former Barry Redcoats, and dedicated to the late Entertainments Manager, John Wilson, commemorates the Butlins Holiday Camp and its operator, showman and philanthropist Sir William 'Billy' Butlin. Sir Billy's widow, Sheila, Lady Butlin, sent a letter expressing her delight at this tribute to her husband and "one of his favourite camps."

Film and television appearances

Between Butlins' closure and Majestic's reopening the camp was used for filming scenes in the "Shangri-La" holiday camp from the ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...

'' serial ''

Delta and the Bannermen ''Delta and the Bannermen'' is the third serial of the 24th season of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast in three weekly parts from 2 to 16 November 1987. In the serial, aliens called the Ban ...

''. Filming took place between 24 June – 8 July 1987

References

External links

Barry Island
at Butlins Memories

at Butlins Memorabilia {{DEFAULTSORT:Barry Island (Holiday Camp) Barry Island Economy of the Vale of Glamorgan Barry, Vale of Glamorgan