Blackpool holiday snaps: Oh, we did like to be beside the seaside

Taken as early as the 1920s, these photographs from the Getty Images vaults, show young women enjoying their time on the beach – donkey-riding, swimming, sun-bathing, playing games and even walking their dogs.One undated picture shows three women on Blackpool Promenade during a heatwave. One wears a divided skirt and the other a straight skirt, both over swimwear. The middle one has a ‘copy’ of the Letty Lynton dress made popular by Joan Crawford in the 1932 film of that name. It was adapted for the mass market, with the triple row of frills at the hem matched by frills at the shoulder, forming cap sleeves. Four bathers are shown on a donkey ride on Blackpool beach at Easter, 1938, on April 18. Also in the 30s, holidaymakers are pictured at the wicked on the Blackpool sand, on May 17, 1936. In another photo, a woman in a headscarf views her tennis partner through her racket on the beach at Blackpool. Bathers enjoy a cigarette after a bathe in the sea at Blackpool, during a Whitsun heat wave, in another snap. Bull mastiffs, full of the holiday spirit, were captured on camera in April 1936, as they dashed down the steps with their owners, on to the beach at Blackpool for their morning exercise. Sun bathers were captured splashing in the sea in the sunshine at Blackpool during another heatwave, when April was described as having August weather. Three young girls can be seen in the 1920s, bathing on the beach. And today’s Memory Lane front cover, is a Getty Images picture, from June 3, 1939, showing girls on the beach at Blackpool, enjoying their ice-creams.