1The nineteenth century had seen tourism in Scotland grow from an elite experience for the few to one shared by all sections of Scottish society and by visitors from outside

2Scotland. Many communities, whether coastal and inland, seaside, spa or sporting, had become dependent on the summer influx of visitors. Tourists found their way even to the very remote island of St Kilda, drawn by the slogan « Come and see Scotland’s own primitives ». There were several strands to tourism in Scotland depending on when in the year as to who went where, of which class and in what number. There was little tourism in Scotland over the winter months, with Easter marking the start of the season when spa resorts and hydro hotels began first to fill¹. The hydros, large hydrotherapeutic hotels, for which the Scots had a particular enthusiasm, attracted a clientele who were churchy, respectable, and temperate; no alcohol was a flagship part of the regime². From May onwards holidaymakers of all classes started to make their way to the coastal and inland resorts for weekday excursions, Saturday day trips or weekends. Middle class and professional families either rented lodgings for a month or owned second homes in a resort, at which they, their families and their servants spent the summer.

3The numbers at Scottish holiday resorts reached a climax mid-summer when in turn each of the industrial towns saw all their factories and mills shut down for a week. Known variously as Trades or Works Weeks, the biggest of these was the Glasgow « Fair » in July, when industrial Glasgow emptied, with hundreds of thousands of workers heading to the resorts by train or steamer, « doun the watter », as it was known. From June onwards visitors from England, North America and the Continent began to appear in Scotland in number, drawn by scenery, history and Scott. Some of these made their way independently but others came on tours organised by firms like Thomas Cook. The arrival of school holidays in England, and the ending of the parliamentary and courts session in July, further increased the flow of better-off visitors from England. An increasing number of these were now travelling north by motor car, and touring around, a pattern which was beginning to hurt the railway companies for whom the first class traffic had been an important source of income, and Highland hotels whose clientele were staying only a short time before moving on. A particularly distinctive type of tourism in which Scotland majored was sporting tourism. There was golf in which almost all could participate regardless of age, gender or skill, but what particularly drew the upper classes to Scotland was its reputation as sporting playground, a place for the elite to shoot and fish, a fashion endorsed by the Royal family with their summer sporting residence at Balmoral. This form of tourism developed later in the summer, with the start of the grouse-shooting season on the 12th August, which saw thousands of wealthy sportsmen, their families and pets heading north to a northern moor.

The outbreak of war and its impact

4The outbreak of war early in August 1914 caught tourism in Scotland in mid-season. The peak of working class holidays had passed and the factories were back to work, but many middle class families were looking to another month at their chosen resort before the schools went back. The sporting tourists and English families were mostly yet to arrive. The immediate effect was a rush home from the resorts, the cancellation of lets for August, and the suspension of grouse shooting in many areas. Touring motorists went south and Highland hotels found themselves with empty rooms. There were scares of spies, and foreigners were rounded up ; a German schoolmaster on a walking holiday in the Trossachs, and an itinerant shoemaker at the Gareloch. The spy mania was taken to absurd levels : even box brownie photography was forbidden in coastal areas, and a bricklayer from Birmingham was fined for sketching the foreshore at Crail³. There was a rush to the internment of aliens, and the hotel industry which had a significant number of European workers at all levels from managers to chefs and waiters lost many staff, French or German, either to military call up or to detainment. Even the Swiss staff employed by Sir Henry Lunn at his big hotel in Pitlochry made plans to quit. One Edinburgh hotel said that it was short of twenty workers. Others from a Haddington business found themselves under arrest in Redford barracks in Edinburgh⁴. Peebles Hydro lost two of its workers, both German, a night porter and a masseur. Just as German tourists and workers in Scotland scrambled to get back home before war was declared, so did tens of thousands of British tourists who had been holidaying on the Continent. There was a mass flight by American tourists from Europe and Britain, some 100-150 000 it was estimated. Some returned through Scotland, others from Scotland. On Saturday 15 August no less than 2 800 left by three ships from Glasgow : the scenes on embarkation reminded observers of the boom days of emigration. Not all were wealthy. There were many schoolteachers making a once in a lifetime tour and some Negro musicians. Relief funds were set up to help those who were financially straitened, and by the end of September the last Americans were back safely in North America. Not till after the War was the American tourist to return.

5The loss of American tourists, year after year during the War, was a severe blow to tourism in Scotland. Those hotels on the beaten path suffered heavily. The Stronlachlachar hotel in the Trossachs had long relied on American business ; over half of its visitors in 1913 and 1914 came from North America. With their disappearance, the hotel’s trade collapsed to an unviable level and it was forced to close in May 1917. Others, particularly in more remote areas, faced the same issues. Abbotsford House, Sir Walter Scott’s home, which was a magnet for many North Americans, saw its numbers of American visitors fall from 2 800 in 1914 to a mere handful in 1915. By way of compensation, it had been hoped that some of those British tourists who would pre-war have holidayed on the Continent, either touring by motor or staying at a spa would look instead to holiday in Britain. British health resorts were particularly hopeful, Scottish spas less so. They lacked the glamour of Harrogate or of Bath. But they had hopes. And certainly some Scottish resorts, other than those on the east coast, did well, once the initial panic had subsided. Moffat spa was bullish about tourism in 1915, with the local press optimistic about the prospects of « being inundated with visitors Easter holidays are indeed rosy. Lodgings in the town are well booked up »⁵.

The war and transport

6But there were many difficulties, which only increased as the war dragged on, notably that of access. The transport system found itself under immense pressure. Despite the demands of military traffic, the railway companies had hoped to continue as much of their peacetime programme as possible, especially excursion traffic which was so profitable. But as the war, supposed to be over by Christmas, dragged on and on, so the pressure on services increased. Staff had joined up, maintenance of track and equipment was restricted and troop supply trains took precedence. Nowhere was the position worse than on the Highland Railway, much of which was single track, which served the far north and the big naval bases in the Cromarty Firth and at Scapa Flow. The company had to move quantities of coal and timber, and personnel; there was the notorious Jellicoe express from London to the northern mainland terminus at Thurso – 22 hours of misery. The train was fitted with special prison compartments to carry delinquent sailors south for courts martial. Given the abnormal level of wartime traffic, it is difficult to see how the Highland Railway could have carried the sporting traffic of pre-war years, had that been at normal levels. And while pre-1914 an increasing number of sporting and touring tenants had motored their way north, motoring during the war was much reduced. Motoring for pleasure was seen as unpatriotic ; petrol rationing was not introduced until June 1916, but petrol was both expensive and scarce. Parties of climbers struggled to find any way of reaching the hills ; one group the Cairngorm club complained in July 1915 that « men horses and motor cars were unobtainable ; the war had removed them. Without them a day amongst these beautiful hills was impossible »⁶. On Skye the Cuillins, a popular proving ground for climbers, were deserted, to the distress of local innkeepers.

7If the railways were overstretched, another transport sector which was badly affected, was that of steamer services. Many of Scotland’s tourist resorts, particularly those in the Firth of Clyde, but also those on Skye and in the Hebrides relied completely on steamer services. Some steamers sailed all the way down the river Clyde from Glasgow, others left from railhead piers such as Wemyss Bay on the Ayrshire mainland for island destinations such as Bute or Cumbrae or Arran. Here the problem was less that of heavy demand, as was the railways’ difficulty, but an acute shortage of carrying capacity as the war saw many of these steamers requisitioned for naval service, as troopships, mine sweepers, or guard ships. And some never returned to civilian usage as was true of all the Galloway excursion steamers in the East⁷. The West Coast fast turbine steamer, the King Edward, which in peace time had been deployed on the run from Glasgow via Dunoon to Inveraray, served as a troopship in the English Channel, and then as a hospital ship to Archangel. First to be taken away from civilian traffic were the excursion steamers of Galloway which had linked Edinburgh with Fife across the Forth estuary, including one brand new boat, the Duchess of Buccleuch. But as there were other ways of reaching Fife, by land, rail and ferry, that loss little affected tourism. It was in the West of Scotland, where sea crossings were required, that the impact on coastal island tourism was most severe. There were simply not enough boats to move holidaymakers to the traditional peacetime island and estuarial destinations, resorts such as Rothesay and Millport or Campbelton, or places like Iona and Staffa, and long queues and uncertain timetables bedevilled coastal services. Excursion trips from the resorts by sea, a pre-war favourite, were cancelled as lifeline services to and from the islands took and had to take priority. The problems of the island resorts, of course were to the benefit of mainland resorts : Ayr and Largs in the West, Aberdeen and Portobello in the East.

8So getting there was not easy and indeed some areas were out of bounds to holidaymakers as they were being used as training grounds for the military. A licence system restricted access beyond Inverness which had become a Special Military Area. To travel north of Inverness for health or recreation, a visitor had to get a permit from Cameron of Lochiel, a simple step but a bother and one more deterrent. Pleasure trips to look at the Forth Bridge and the new naval base of Rosyth were prohibited. Others areas were under the cloud of enemy activity. Air raids by Zeppelins or Gothas and Giants were trivial, but the raids by the German High Seas fleet in late 1914 on the northern English towns of Scarborough and Whitby, which caused both damage and civilian casualties, did raise real questions about the safety of holidaying anywhere on Britain’s east coast. The government did provide some financial compensation for loss of income from tourism to a number of English resorts, which had been attacked – £ 10 700 in the case of Scarborough – but no Scottish resort qualified as no actual damage had been done to them by enemy action.

The tourism Industry responds

9In response to the threat from the German navy, some British inland resorts attempted to make a virtue out of their location – far from the sea –, and railway companies mounted advertising campaigns to attract holiday visitors to safe areas in the South and South West. There was even London Underground’s remarkable poster for Easter 1915 « Why Bother about the Germans Invading the Country. Invade it yourself by Underground and Motor Bus »8. Promotion in Scotland was much more muted. Callander hydro advertised itself as « Secure from War’s Alarm » as did Moffat under the slogan « sixty miles from the sea : safety and comfort », and there was a movement of schools from threatened areas in England to Scotland – Pitlochry and Moffat. That fear subsided and by the later stages of the war, Scottish east coast resorts were as busy as their counterparts in the west, their blight only temporary. In August 1918 a census was taken at the east coast resort of North Berwick on 10-11 August.

10It found summer visitors a plenty : over 3 000 in a town with a permanent population of only 2 505. There were other problems. Resorts were much duller than they had been pre-war with no German bands for example. Circuses were banned within ten miles of the coast. Alcohol, as with tea and sugar, was in short supply. Those who had friends and family in the countryside could find supplies of eggs and ham, tourism of importance but below the radar.

11Amusements were less available. Portobello, that popular resort within walking range of Edinburgh was Scotland’s closest equivalent to Blackpool with a pier, Marine Gardens and Zoological Park. But within months of the outbreak of war, most of its facilities had been taken over by the military. The Marine Gardens, which had drawn 750 000 visitors in its first year of operation in 1909, was requisitioned as a barracks for the Territorial Army and then later used by the fledging RAF⁹. There was still one fairground, but overall Portobello’s attractions, other than the superb beach were much reduced. The pier was rickety, the cable car tram service from the city unreliable, beer supplies insufficient. Golf courses in Scotland, a key part in the tourist experience for many, were hard hit ; some were taken over as at Turnberry for airfields¹⁰, others ploughed up for food, or just abandoned for lack of players as at Tobermory on the island of Mull. The fall in summer visitors hurt golf clubs in the tourist areas; at Cruden Bay and Crail takings fell disastrously. The Golf Club at Grantown on Spey had had a membership of 1 624 in 1914, many of whom were summer visitors ; by 1916 that was down to 938, with the loss of younger members particularly acute. No club championship was held¹¹. At Gleneagles work on the flagship railway golfing hotel there was suspended.

12Accommodation and amenities were a further issue. Great houses, hotels and apartments alike were taken over for the war effort, to billet troops, as act as offices and training headquarters, to serve as military or auxiliary hospitals. In the fading spa town of Bridge of Allan, the historic Royal Hotel was taken over to become the headquarters of the 52^nd Lowland Division and Hyndwood House became an Auxiliary Hospital, staffed by thirty six local ladies, one of but hundreds of big resort houses pressed into service¹². No group was more vulnerable than the hydropathic establishments, whose baths and showers made them ideal therapeutic institutions for the wounded in body or mind. Craiglockhart, Dunblane, Peebles and Moffat all became military hospitals. By contrast, Shandon Hydro, on the Clyde at Gareloch was requisitioned as a torpedo testing station. The role of Craiglockhart Hydro (or Slateford Military Hospital), as a centre for the treatment of shell shock, under the pioneering regime of William Rivers, is well-known. Some 1 500 officers were treated there between 1916 and the end of the war, including the war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen¹³. Fortesque Fox, long-time physician at the northern spa of Strathpeffer, had advocated the use of hydros and spas for remedial therapy¹⁴. His own spa resort, remote as it was, was saved from becoming a ghost town only by becoming a centre for military and naval recuperation. The Strathpeffer Spa express, a special train that had run non stop from Aviemore, with better off families booked in their own private compartments, ceased to run after the 1915 season. The local newspaper noted gloomily in 1916 that rail traffic to the spa was much lighter and that there was a « complete absence of those special saloon parties which were so common in pre-war days »¹⁵. But what saved the day was that the military took over many of the spa buildings ; the Highland Hotel became a hospital for the US Navy in 1918.

Adjustment and success

13Those hotels that remained open, providing that they were not too remote, could and did do reasonably well. Crieff Hydro, for example, saw its visitor numbers and average bed occupancy rise during the war despite having to put its rates up, and remained in profit throughout the period, paying an annual dividend of 9 % each year. There was a loyal constituency of retired, churchy and professional people who, despite the squeeze on their incomes¹⁶, and pressure not to spend on themselves, could still afford a holiday. Seaside and inland resorts alike found numbers building back up even as the war continued. Civilian families returned in number. There were those at the front who might get leave. There were convalescent soldiers, in their distinctive blue uniform. There were those who might before the war have gone abroad. But the key driver was working class holidaymaking. Employment in the munition and armaments sector boomed and with that went rising income. One newspaper put it clearly that « a considerable number of those engaged in munitions or other war work are making larger wages than they ever made before and they feel justified in spending a considerable part of these on the improvement of themselves and their families »¹⁷. This was good news for the holiday resorts, even if the pressure on accommodation during the summer became even more acute. By 1916, many resorts were reporting bumper crowds for the works holidays delayed that year by the Somme offensive until August. It was said that never in its history had Helensburgh housed so many souls at the one time, with every room let at big prices. Waiting times for the short ferry crossing back from Millport to mainland Largs reached the ten hour mark. 1917 saw even more traffic to the tourist resorts, and the next year was even more busy or so the Scottish press reported, they having asked the transport agencies for details of bookings and tickets sold. The rush to the coast meant every train from Glasgow to the Ayrshire resorts was full, even with extra services laid on, and the steamer service, with only one boat was available from the Broomielaw was simply swamped, with thousands left behind to their acute disappointment. Somehow large numbers did reach Rothesay – over 50 000 landing at the pier during the holiday weekend as against 48 000 the previous year¹⁸.

14There could be tension in those resorts where there was war work. Off season, it was not a problem. Landladies who had been accustomed to rely on their summer takings from holidaymakers appreciated that munition workers were an all-year round proposition, but this did reduce what summer rooms were available. A further complication was that with the shortage of servants, some families who would once have rented houses were instead looking for lodgings with a housekeeper. The war shone an interesting sidelight on the working of the accommodation market for visitors. While many just turned up at the resorts on spec, without booking accommodation in advance, better off workers had been accustomed to book their holiday week lodgings well ahead. And for their part landladies charged a premium above normal letting rates during these high demand weeks. But shipyard workers at places like Troon complained in March 1918 that they were faced either with losing their accommodation to the summer visitors or having to pay paying the much higher rates to their landladies « the bonus rates usually obtained from summer visitors »¹⁹.

Tension and social conflict

15It is clear that many resorts, not always to the delight of their stuffier residents, saw a change in the class and tone of their summer visitors. There were both more working class people and they made more noise, especially when (in that good Scots phrase) « drink had been taken ». The editor of the local paper at Helensburgh, which had always regarded itself as a cut above working class resorts such as Dunoon or Rothesay, complained bitterly in May 1916 that there « had been very disgraceful scenes, which show the need that exists for prohibition during the war at least. Many of the victims were young men, between twenty and forty, evidently engineering and munitions workers with plenty of money in their pocket and behaving in a foolish way as if no war was going on »²⁰. It was a complaint echoed in many other resorts. There had always been a collusion of cultures in the resorts, but what seemed to make things worse was that this was wartime ; that some were enjoying themselves excessively while others at the front died. A further aggravation was that the offenders in some cases were young women, munitionettes with money in their pockets.

16There had always been something of a gender imbalance in the flow of holidaymakers to resorts and in the summer populations. There were older, single and widowed women. An established pattern was that of professional families who took a property for the summer, with father returning home two of three days a week to his business. That midweek the resorts had a surplus of women was no new phenomenon, therefore. But the position shifted further. A census taken at Largs in the summer of 1915 established that two thirds of the visitors were female ; and in east an Edinburgh paper in the following year thought that the ratio at the resorts was nearer twenty to one for every young man. Of course, there were so many men away. But what was tilting the ratio was the arrival of numbers of working class girls with money to spend, not servants but holidaymakers in their own right.

17To sum up, the short term effect of the outbreak of war was panic and a flight from the holiday resorts. Reasonably soon, however, holidaymaking began to reassert itself. There were from 1915 onwards no American or European visitors, but in part compensation more English and Scottish domestic tourists. The areas worst hurt were initially the eastern coastal resorts, but as invasion scares receded they regained their popularity. In the West, mainland tourism did well, although the flow of holidaymakers to (and from) the islands was severely restricted by shortages of shipping. The Isle of Man, a favourite destination of Glaswegian holidaymakers, was very hard hit ; tourism numbers at Douglas by 1916 were one-tenth their pre-war level. Skye, Lewis and other Scottish islands too suffered. But what Douglas lost, mainland resorts either at the coast such Ayr, Dunoon, Portobello and Aberdeen, or inland – Callander and Pitlochry – gained. People with disposable income and free time wanted to holiday. The Highlands fared worst of all the regions. Its staple, sporting tourism, was crippled. There were fewer sportsmen, few keepers, a shortage of transport and of beaters. Elsewhere in Britain shooting continued. The record grouse bag in Britain was set in August 1915 on a Lancashire moor. But in Scotland, it was small scale for the duration of the war. Not only Highland landowners suffered by the loss of rental income, but so also did all those involved in the supply of provisions. The lively circuit of post-sport amusements – balls, dances and Highland Games collapsed. The West of Scotland and elsewhere did see however a remarkable growth of working class holidaymakers, back it was thought by 1917 to pre-war levels. War work in munitions and armaments translated itself into enthusiasm for time off at the resorts. There may have been fewer young men but in their place were more and more girls, munitionettes, flush with money. The effect of war was lopsided- in geographical terms, in terms of the nationality of tourists, in terms of the class and gender composition : more working class, more women. There was, of course, a legacy of the war with a backlog of investment in and repairs to the transport and accommodation sectors alike, and sporting estates were very run down. The War Office did pay compensation to hotels and hydros that had been requisitioned – £ 1 750 in the case of Moffat Hydro – but it was never enough, and repairs took time. Few hotels were ready to reopen in 1919 or even 1920, and the luxury hotel at Gleneagles was not completed until 1923.

18Did tourism in the 1920s revert to its pre-war volumes and patterns ? This was largely the case for Scotland, it would seem, as Walton has argued for England : « no lasting trends were set [and] pre- war trends resumed their sovereignty »²¹. The Americans and the Europeans returned, drawn as they had long been by Scott, scenery and tartanry, and the seaside and inland resorts in Scotland continued to have the wholehearted support of the middle and working classes. Steamer and rail services were restored. Sporting tourism, grouse and golf, revived and flourished. The Scottish spas, however, remained third division in European terms. They remained respectable and dull, and short of young men to make up partners for the tea dances. The war, therefore, as we have seen, did reshape tourism, but with peace the old pattern largely reasserted itself. A visitor returning in 1920 would not have found his or her portfolio of attractions, amenities and experiences very different from that before the war.