In another minute or two, the distant
bathing machines would begin to move, and then the elderly gentlemen of regular habits and sober quaker ladies would be coming to take their salutary morning walks.
(Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of
bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
The rooms were shut up, the lodgers almost all gone, scarcely any family but of the residents left; and, as there is nothing to admire in the buildings themselves, the remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay, which, in the season, is animated with
bathing machines and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger's eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.
The Kitsch'n' Sync dancers,
bathing machine on prom (top right) and Pure Evil's signature tear (top left) |
The wheel in the drawing is from a
bathing machine, an object of great fascination to Dodgson and which appears in some of his humorous poems - notably The Hunting Of The Snark.
These include a multifunctional beach hut in Bournemouth, Dorset, and an ingenious 21st century update of a
bathing machine in Kent.
The original wooden
bathing machine, which ran down a ramp into the sea and from which Victoria would emerge in her swimming suit, her modesty preserved, has been returned to the beach.
His snake occupies the adjacent
bathing machine -- an Edwardian contraption resembling something out of a torture chamber.
Other historic icons include Crosby Mill, the Five Lamps, a 1900 holiday "
bathing machine" and Wilson's Grocers.
Judging by the wooden
bathing machine used to hide her modesty when she went for a dip in the sea, Victoria wouldn't have been amused at the huge number of strangers now invading the privacy of her bedroom.
Bathing machine in Llawn arts festival in Llandudno |
Later still came the
bathing machine, complete with a funnel-like awning under which the fair sex could disport themselves, free from anxiety on the score of modesty.
bathing machine - a building containing dressing rooms for bathers