Introduction: Pleasure Grounds as Domestic Tourism

These enticing claims, used to encourage visitors to Manchester's principal pleasure ground in the summer of 1931, highlight the attraction of the day-trip over an extended stay away from home. Prospective visitors would recognise the leisure spaces of the fair, zoo, country and sports ground and the famous places in the entertainment landscapes of England and the USA. Moreover, a day-trip could be enjoyed with minimal disruption to visitors' daily routines and weekly budgets. Ideas of familiarity and convenience have been central, arguably, to the popularity of small-scale domestic tourism. The absence of 'rush and fuss, expense and discomfort', however, has rendered these trips invisible in histories of tourism. As John Benson has argued, 'the day (and part-day) trip/excursion has always been the most common, as well as the most easily overlooked, form of tourist activity' (Benson, 1994: 83).

This chapter seeks to raise the profile of this kind of domestic tourism by focusing on two leisure sites – Belle Vue in Manchester and the Crystal Palace in south London – that catered for these shorter visits. The term 'pleasure ground' is used to describe Belle Vue and the Crystal Palace as sites that encompassed the shift from the pleasure gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries to the post-war theme park.