When I was a child and teenager I was fascinated by stories that my Grandparents generation would tell me about their lives in a time so close and yet so distant. When I wrote an extended essay for my history o-level (exams taken when you were 16 in the UK) I explored life in the Blitz as I lived in a town that received a lot of bombing and many people were still alive that remembered going through it as adults as well as children. I was not just interested in the war though but other pre and post war memories of work, shopping, film, TV, radio, health, cooking, cleaning, social life, sport and everyday dramas. One Uncle being shipwrecked during WWII and listening to screams as fellow crewmen were eaten by sharks during the night. My Father's Uncles recalling humorous stories, eccentric relatives and getting up to high jinks during the 1920's and '30's and their father's butcher shop. My Mother's Uncles accidentally meeting in Russia towards the end of World War 1 having not seen each other for years, working down coal mines and life in Scotland as well as moving to England for work.  

Today my parents remember rationing, my father was moving out of the town during the war, my mother spending nights in bomb shelters, Laurel and Hardy and Danny Kaye visiting their home town theatre a couple of decades before The Rolling Stones and The Beatles visited the same venue. Anna's Grandmother (in her 90's) has given us fascinating insights into life in Switzerland during WWII. I wish I could have recorded all of these conversations. They are a part of real history that add an insight into the last century that may be lost to future generations. 

It is unlikely with the internet and the way life, media and art is stored, recorded and logged in this century that we will ever not know many insights into the 21st century - though we will have to root out the misinformation and false stories sold as facts. 

Anyway - I was thinking it may be nice for members of the forum to collect here stories from the 20th century about naturism that they may have heard through trusted story tellers or even their own childhood. Stories that may help us store some ideas, facts and memories about our lifestyle that may otherwise be lost, forgotten or misinterpreted in decades to come.

My first little story I would like to share here is one that has been told to me by two older women on two different occasions a few years back, and I have read some reports that back this up too.

Basically they both spoke about how during the second word war in the UK they would spend much of their time in the small villages they lived in naked during the summer months. With the young men being at war and the villages basically being retirees, women and children there was a laid back attitude towards clothes. Children were used to running around in the gardens or swimming naked and the mothers often joined them for river dips or sunbathing, tending the flowers and growing vegetables in the garden. They both spoke of women working on farms naked too.

One of the ladies (the Grandmother of an old girlfriend) lived in a village by the coast and the lady spoke of how everyone used the beach naked during that time too (when they were sfaely allowed to use the beaches) and had been quite used to using beaches like this prior to the war and things only really changed in that respects after the world and the move towards the 1950's. Which also coincided with a greater move to being concerned about things like underarm hair.  

One story I have always felt connected to was from a man in his sixties (or more) who used to visit our local beach Pedn Vounder. He told us that he had been coming to the beach as a naturist since he was a child and with his mother and sometimes he used to also visit with his Grandmother who had told him that she used to come down to the beach and be naked with her mother in the 1880's. Though they didn't consider it naturism at the time. Just going to the beach and not wearing clothes! Not only did this mean he was the fourth generation to  definitely use the beach as a "naturist" in his family but also that the beach has certainly been used for naturism for 140 years. 

In all likelihood his great grandmother had grown up using the beach and probably her parents and grandparents had before her. The introduction of enforced swimwear in the 1860's had probably been ignored in this remote area of Cornwall - just as it had been ignored at many rural and "socially - distant" areas at the time so Pedn Vounder has probably always had a constant "naturist" use though of course it was considered just a natural way of using a beach at the time. One of the reasons I like the term naturist - being undressed in the sun and swimming in water is a very natural thing to do. Nude suggests that something has been taken away - natural suggest that nothing has been added. 

The beach seems to have a lot of multi-generational use spanning years. On the same beach we met a woman in her twenties who had been visiting the beach since her parents started taken her and travels down to Cornwall at least twice a year - which would be over thirty years now. Earlier this summer we met a man in his 50's/60's whose parents used to visit the beach while on holiday leaving him with his Grandmother when he was very young and then introduced him to it when he was a little older and he has been coming back ever since too.

We have met couples who have stumbled across the beach on a one off holiday and then make it a regular thing. One couple discovered it before they were married and kept returning when their babies were born and these babies were in their late teens when we met the family on the beach. Also locals would do the same and we have known elderly parents escorted to the beach with their middle aged children. That personal history with the beach seems so important. Maybe our children will be taking our grandchildren one day.

Great stories.  Thanks for sharing.

Going back to my account above I remember when I worked in a farm in Keri Keri, New Zealand just over thirty years ago talking to a middle aged woman who was doing some work with us and owned a small farm of her own. She got chatting about how she often works naked around her own farm. She recounted a story about one day she was thinning out baby melons while naked and the man who co-owned the farm we were working on turned up for a chat about something and had been a little embarrassed when she stood up to greet him and he realised she was naked. There was a completey naturist attitude to her belief that it seems natural and right to work naked during farming whenever you can and the weather is nice. I wasn't sure whether she was testing the idea of the group of us working together that afternoon stripping off to make the work easier.

I remember thinking at the time (as the sun beat down on us) how sensible it would be working naked in such environments and although I wouldn't have dared (at the time) I wished it was something that was part of working in the sun. I would imagine we have worked with the land naked throughout our long history and I wonder how many farmer today still do. Probably more common with small market gardening farms like she had than large intensive farming.