Filey holiday camp station Jan '09 10 snaps

Filey Holiday camp was the biggest of Billy Butlin's camps. It extended to some 400 acres and eventually accommodating nearly 11,000 campers.When the station opened just after the second world war, most holiday makers traveled to the camp by train but as the years went by more and more people came by car until it was uneconomic to keep the station open. The last train ran on Saturday 17th July 1977. Passengers would arrive by train, and then be taken under the road through a concrete subway to the holiday camp. i'd heard that the subway was flooded, but was interested in finding out if that were true.

Filey Holiday Camp station, 29th June 1974 (photo B.Mills)
The road train is visable at the bottom of the picture.


Today the track has gone, and yet much else survives.


All platforms, concourse, exit steps, fencing and concrete lampposts are still in situ - the lampposts even still have the public address speakers attached.


After a bit of a pointless wander round, the passenger subway was discovered. Would it be submerged?


Thankfully, Lord Baden Powell's boy scout motto ringing in my ears, I was prepared, and ventured into the dark.


It was a bit of a treacherous clamber over discarded sinks (no taps, my pikie friends) and the pile of toilet cisterns, no longer flushing away the shit of a thousand holiday makers.


At somepoint, the subway has been backfilled, and at the end are the remains of something very 1970's. Possibly from a ride, or cafe, these bench seates were stacked up.


The passenger subway was divided into three sections. At a guess, pedestrians through the middle and road train either side? All three were flooded. The end of the middle one shows the backfilled earth behind piles of rotting foam.


The left hand section of the subway. I love the fact that in a horrible, dark, flooded and forgotten place like this, there are some fantastic colours.


These pictures make it look lovely and bright and shiny. It's not. A last view looking back towards the open end of the subway. I'm about half way back and those are the toilet cisterns dumped at the entrance.



It was around the moment that I clicked the camera on the last shot, that it occurred to me I may be mentally ill. Whilst the majority of the population were relaxing after a lovely Sunday dinner, or in the pub, or browsing around warm brightly lit shops, I had driven nearly a hundred miles to wade in stagnant water in the dark to take some pictures of some rubbish buried in a tunnel. Ah well, beats crack.