For most people today, an annual holiday has become an essential part of their lifestyle.

To not be able to afford one is regarded as a measure of poverty, happily and easily overcome by the use of the credit card.

Holidays were originally holy days or saints' days on which you were expected to attend church. By the middle of the 18th Century there were about 40 such days, though not all were observed in every part of the country.

To earlier generations, however, the idea of an annual holiday (especially one with pay) would be regarded as a fantasy because, apart from rich landowners and merchants, most people in our area worked on the land and lived an ill-paid, hand-to-mouth existence. Women worked at home, often plaiting straw, and children from their earliest years also worked. A day's holiday meant the loss of a day's earnings.

An Act of 1834 decreed that the Bank of England would be closed on Good Friday, May 1, November 1 and Christmas Day - hence Bank Holidays. Holidays with pay were introduced gradually at about the same time as railways appeared. Banks gave their staff (white collar staff only) a week's holiday.

Jobs with the council or civil service had a week's paid leave by 1901, largely as a result of pressure from the trade unions. For that reason, jobs as postmen and railway workers were eagerly sought.

It was not until 1938 that legislation was passed requiring employers to grant paid holidays of one week a year plus Bank Holidays. Today, this has gone up to one-month's paid holiday.

The first 50 years of the 20th Century saw many improvements in holidays and leisure, brought about by better wages, more jobs and easier travel.

Butlins holiday camps began at Skegness on April 11, 1936, and travel agents, such as Cooks, offered both home and overseas holiday packages for the wealthy. That age, above all, was the heyday of the outing on a charabanc or train. Clubs, pubs and organisations of every description took advantage of low-cost day trips to the seaside and country.

A particular favourite local venue was Folly Farm, in Hadley, where Eli Frusher kept pigs during the winter, and roundabouts during the summer. It was a chosen venue for Sunday school excursions from London King's Cross to New Barnet.

And we can now reveal for the first time a scandal that occurred on this site which was carefully hushed up at the time. A most popular drink for visiting children was the ginger beer, specially made by the Hadley Brewery.

On one occasion, an unfortunate fault in its manufacture resulted in alcohol being introduced into the ginger beer, which was served to a visiting church Sunday school.

The resulting mayhem, although modest by today's binge-drinking standards, caused considerable anxiety among the church authority.

5:54pm Thursday 17th August 2006

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