The Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Camp

The Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Camp at Skegness, on the east coast of England, was opened in May 1939, to provide an annual holiday for Derbyshire coal miners and their families. It was seen as a pioneering venture and was part of a broad range of welfare benefits provided by a national Miners' Welfare Scheme established in the 1920s. The camp enabled miners and their families to have a week's holiday by the sea, many for the first time. Its creation owed much to the campaigning work of the trades union, the Derbyshire Miners' Association and, in particular, to the inspiration of Henry Hicken, one of the Derbyshire Miners' leaders. The Skegness camp finally closed in the late 1990s, coinciding with the demise of the British coal mining industry and the continued growth in the availability of affordable holidays in Spain and elsewhere. A similar, but smaller, camp for Derbyshire miners and their families was opened after the Second World War, in Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales.^[1]