sconzani: beach huts

01 October 2025

Weymouth: beach huts

I've written about Brits and their beach huts on this blog before, back in June 2019, so I won't rehash here what I've said before; you can read that for yourselves if you're interested by clicking on the link above. Suffice to say that the concept of the beach hut is alive and well – one might even say thriving – in the Dorset seaside town of Weymouth.

In that previous blog I wrote: 'My eye is drawn to the design of the different huts and their wonderful vibrant colours, and the way they sit in the land- or town-scape. They are very photogenic, and I hope to find more to photograph.' Well, now I have and here they are....

Greenhill Gardens, on Weymouth beach front, is home to two separate and very different areas of beach hut constructions. The earliest, most imposing and most unusual is the two-storey building containing a total of 45 beach chalets, 31 on the ground level – the earliest part of the building, and an additional 14 on the second level (according to the English Heritage website – I didn't actually count them). You can read a brief summary of the interesting story behind their construction on the Greenhill Gardens website.

The gardens also contain a further two single-storey terraces of huts, colourfully painted and located in a slightly elevated, well-maintained garden setting. For more comprehensive detail on the actual buildings and the reasons they are Grade-II listed, here's a link to the entry on the Historic England website.

This final grouping of beach huts is set to the north of the Greenhill Gardens huts, and appears to be a more modern construction that includes a shallow pool in front. Though my photographs don't show any of the huts in use, that is simply because I wanted to avoid invading people's privacy – many of the huts were in use during my three visits to Weymouth this past summer.

17 October 2014

England: Bexhill and Eastbourne

I hadn’t been to any of England’s south coast seaside towns before but certainly enjoyed dipping my toes in during this trip. I showed you a little of Devon’s Budleigh Salterton and Sidmouth in a recent blog – now here’s a little of what East Sussex has to offer. I didn’t spend much time exploring these places so this blog will be mostly photos. I hope you enjoy your day at the seaside as much as I did.

Bexhill

It wasn’t exactly beach going weather the day we went to Bexhill, with occasional heavy showers of rain and strong gusty winds from the remnants of Hurricane Bertha making walking along the prom a bit of a chore but very exhilarating. We had lunch and saw an exhibition of the work of designer Ivan Chermayeff in the local De La Warr Pavilion, and rounded off the afternoon with a cider at a pub that had been a smugglerss haunt in centuries past. I loved the diversity!

A picturesque row of beach huts along the pebble beach

Love the Victorian bathing machine on the right: it would have been wheeled into the water so that women could step down directly into the water

On the right is the De La Warr Pavilion

Eastbourne

Eastbourne has recovered well from the Second World War when it was the most bombed town on the south coast. Sadly though, when I visited it had very recently suffered another piece of bad luck – part of its famous pier had been destroyed by fire so we weren’t able to walk along it.

Eastbourne became a popular seaside resort in Victorian times so the front is lined almost exclusively with hotels and boarding houses with typically Victorian architecture. As well as having its own attractions for holidaymakers, Eastbourne is also one of the gateways for visitors to the South Downs National Park, dedicated walkers can easily access the South Downs Way to enjoy some of England’s finest footpaths and countryside, and it’s a short hop, skip and a jump to the stunning cliffs of Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters – more on those in my next blog.