Preserving one's modesty

When the British fell in love with the seaside, they invented a mobile building to convey them to the water. Kathryn Ferry tells the remarkable tale of the bathing machine

- Kathryn Ferry

FROM his tall plinth on Weymouth seafront, the towering figure of George III in his finery surveys the sandy bay he helped popularise. The Dorset resort is still defined by its Georgian buildings erected in the wake of the King’s first visit in 1789, but, like every good seaside town, Weymouth has been shaped by the shifting tastes of generations of tourists and the architectural layers of multiple eras. Even the beach huts here are historic and varied and there is much to absorb.

Beyond the King’s gaze, there are terraced post-war chalets around a paddling pool, rows of mock-Tudor style huts from the 1920s and a run of concrete huts with cast-iron columns that are unusual for being Grade II listed and for having a bowling green built on top of them. Along the beach itself are unique huts without walls; their design features a lockable box at the back in which is kept the canvas that provides privacy and a form of structural integrity when the owner is in residence. It is, however, the wheeled hut permanently stationed next to George III’s statue that is the ancestor of them all, the much-derided, but surprisingly longlived bathing machine.