On this day in Wembury, 25 August 1939
The Coventry Evening Telegraph carried a small but striking advertisement for Wembury Point Holiday Camp, promoting late-season vacancies from 26 August onwards. The wording was cheerful and full of pre-war optimism:
“September is best in the Golden West… On the edge of the sea, own bathing pool, stables, band and all sports.”
Readers were invited to write for a free booklet and enjoy a carefree coastal break in South Devon.
With hindsight the timing gives the advert a sharp edge. It appeared just nine days before the outbreak of the Second World War. Britain was in the last, tense week of peace. Many families who booked late August holidays had no idea that within days evacuation would begin, air-raid precautions would be tightened and life at the coast would change almost overnight.
Wembury Point itself would soon be transformed from a holiday setting to a heavily controlled military landscape, with coastal defences, training exercises and wartime restrictions replacing the simple leisure of bathing pools and summer bands. This small advertisement captures one of the very last moments of normality before the world shifted.
Source, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 25 August 1939.