"Brightly coloured beach huts are an essential part of the British coast. They go together with ice creams, sandcastles and the unreliable British weather to form part of our experience of summer by the seaside. Recently the spirit of nostalgia for the British coast has meant that beach huts, in some locations, can sell for more money than houses in other areas and given that you cannot stay overnight in them and many need annual maintenance, this is really saying something! Beach huts really started to be used in the early years of the twentieth century. Before then, bathing had been a cumbersome and expensive affair. Men and women bathed on separate beaches and changing for a dip in the ocean was performed out of view in a bathing machine, which was towed a safe distance out to sea before the nervous bather took his or her plunge into the often uninvitingly cold sea water. When we finally dispensed with the bathing machine many were left abandoned on the beach. In the Edwardian era and in the years following the First World War, the sight of people of both sexes in bathing costumes had become acceptable. However, changing in public was frowned upon and could result