Heritage project to shine spotlight on Hayling Island’s holiday camp history for college students’ documentary film

A Level students from Havant and South Downs College’s Havant campus will be researching the holiday camps developed by Captain Harry Warner as well as the history of other camps on Hayling.

Thanks to a £37,500 grant from the National Lottery’s Heritage Lottery Fund, the students will investigate Warner’s work creating Britain’s first chain of holiday camps - the first of which was built in Northney in 1931, half a decade before Billy Butlin opened his first camp in Skegness.

The students will then work with Emsworth-based film production company Millstream Productions to make a documentary film, as well as creating a book featuring their research.

They will also mount an exhibition at The Spring Arts and Heritage Centre in Havant at the end of May next year.

Project coordinator Steve Murray is a film and media lecturer at HSDC.

He said: ‘We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for giving our students the opportunity to find out more about the fascinating history of Hayling and its holiday camps.

‘Due to the pandemic, students have recently had few opportunities to work together on projects of this kind and we hope our team will enjoy finding out more about the history of the area in which they live and study.’

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The project will also look at the influence of the Billy Line railway before its closure in 1962, the crucial contribution to the Normandy Landings made by the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties after the camps were requisitioned during the Second World War, and the invention of windsurfing on the island by Peter Chilvers.

Tobey Gannon, a second year student studying English, film, and 3D design, said: ‘I live on Hayling and am interested in working in the film industry so I’m pleased to have been

given the opportunity to take part in the project.

‘I’m looking forward to finding out more about the history of holidays on Hayling and hearing people share their memories of visiting and working on the island.’

Students are keen to speak to anyone who worked at or visited

one of the holiday camps during their heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s.

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