My doctoral research at the University of Cumbria focused on two organisations that pioneered the provision of outdoor holidays for working people in the early-twentieth century, the Co-operative Holidays Association (CHA) and the Holiday Fellowship (HF Holidays).

The Co-operative Holidays Association (CHA) and the Holiday Fellowship were founded in 1893 and 1913, respectively, by Thomas Arthur Leonard, a congregational minister in Colne, Lancashire in the 1890s. These two pioneering organisations were at the forefront of the provision of cheap and simple accommodation to serve the growing popularity of active open-air recreation during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their purpose was:

“to provide simple and strenuous recreative and educational holidays by offering reasonably priced accommodation and to promote friendship and fellowship amid the beauty of the natural world”.

The Co-operative Holidays Association, re-named the Countrywide Holidays Association in 1964 but always affectionately known as the CHA, ceased to operate as a holiday provider in 2004. The Holiday Fellowship, re-branded as HF Holidays in 1982, continues to provide holidays today.

My research at the University of Cumbria was completed in February 2015 when I was awarded a PhD in Cultural History by the University of Lancaster. My PhD thesis is entitled: Whatever happened to ‘rational’ holidays for working people, c.1919-2000: The competing demands of altruism and commercial necessity in the Co-operative Holidays Association and Holiday Fellowship. See https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/1770

As well as founding the CHA in 1893 and the Holiday Fellowship in 1913, T.A. Leonard was also instrumental in the establishment of the Youth Hostels Association (YHA) in 1930 and the formation of the Ramblers’ Association (RA) in 1935, of which he was the first President (see here). He strongly supported the National Trust (NT), founded in 1895, and was a stalwart of the campaign for national parks during the 1930s. He was a founder member of the Friends of the Lake District (FoLD) in 1934 and was connected with a number of other outdoor holiday organisations such as the Friendship Holidays Association. Leonard was born in Finsbury, London in 1864 and died in Conwy, North Wales in 1948. On his death, he was hailed as the “Founder of co-operative and communal holidays and Father of the open-air movement in this country”. See T A Leonard’s biography here.

My book on T.A. Leonard and the CHA, entitled ‘Thomas Arthur Leonard and the Co-operative Holidays Association: Joy in widest commonalty spread’ was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in hardback in January 2017 and paperback in March 2018.  To read a full summary of the book and a 30-page sample extract, and purchase a copy, please visit the following link:

 http://www.cambridgescholars.com/thomas-arthur-leonard-and-the-co-operative-holidays-association

The book details the life and achievements of this extraordinary man, who rebelled against the conventionality of the 1880s and 1890s and was appalled by the dull and grim lives of artisans and textile workers in the industrial north of England. It also tells the story of the CHA, which pioneered walking holidays in the outdoors for working people, from its foundation in 1893 to its demise in 2004. The book records the genesis, successes, failures and eventual demise of an organisation that lasted for over a century, a century of great social, political and economic upheaval, during which many tens of thousands of guests of the CHA enjoyed the fellowship and camaraderie of a break away from working life.

On 1 August 1894, ten members of the CHA on one of the earliest CHA group holidays were drowned in a boating accident on the Mawddach Estuary at Barmouth in North Wales when two of the three rowing boats they were in were swamped by high waves. The Barmouth Disaster, as it was known, received national attention in the press at the time but has largely been forgotten. My article on the disaster, entitled ‘A Boating Disaster on the Mawddach Estuary in 1894’ was published in the Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society in October 2019 (see here)

The following papers have also resulted from my doctoral research at the University of Cumbria:

An article entitled ‘Of Fells and Fellowship: the life and legacy of T A Leonard’ in Cumbria Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 7, October 2009 (County Publications Ltd).

A paper on ‘Rational and Improving Holidays: Changes and continuities in the provision of accommodation for outdoor activities in the twentieth century’ to the Leisure Studies Association conference in April 2010 at the University of Bolton, published in the conference proceedings Recording Leisure Lives: Holidays and Tourism in 20th Century Britain edited by Robert Snape & Daniel Smith (LSA Publication No.112).

An article on Thomas Arthur Leonard (1864-1948), founder of the CHA and HF, published in the on-line Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in May 2013 (Reference 104775).

A paper to the North-West Network Sport and Leisure History Workshop of the British Society of Sports History (BSSH) held at MMU Crewe in November 2012 entitled ‘Pen and paper quizzes, games and dances: holiday making with the Co-operative Holidays Association and Holiday Fellowship’, published in Sport and Leisure Histories by Manchester Metropolitan University in 2013.

A paper entitled ‘International Friendships with the Co-operative Holidays Association’ to the symposium on Sport and Leisure on the Eve of the First World War, held at MMU Crewe on 27th/28th June 2014 and hosted by MMU Sport and Leisure History Research Group in conjunction with the BSSH, published in Sport and Leisure on the Eve of the First World War, by MMU Sport and Leisure History (SpLeisH), and edited by Dave Day, in 2016. See here.

Paper entitled ‘The democratisation of tourism in the English Lake District: the role of the Co-operative Holidays Association and the Holiday Fellowship’ published in the Journal of Tourism History (Volume 8 Number 2, August 2016) by Taylor and Francis. See here.

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