View of Weymouth the summer before the Second World War

The appearance of the beach would change soon. The bathing machines would disappear as would the beach huts close to the water’s edge, to be replaced by barbed wire anti invasion devices. After the War, the bathing machines would not return.

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For the bus enthusiast there were many interesting vehicles waiting to depart from the bus stops in the middle of the Esplanade, a system which remained until the early 1950s.

In the town centre a number of prominent buildings take up the skyline. The Regent Cinema, known to thousands of visitors and residents would be replaced more than fifty years later by the town centre shopping development. The White Ensign Club, described in Pevsner’s Buildings of England as “Weymouth’s most distinguished building of the last hundred years”

was designed by Crickmay in 1905 and demolished in 1970. Surely an alternative use could be found for it. In the event, the demolition gangs found it hard going.

Westwey Road had been opened in 1932 and its construction gave the opportunity for the gasworks to extend and new buildings to be erected. In April 1939 the St John Ambulance Hall was opened and this lasted until in 1995 when it was declared structurally unsafe and was replaced, and the British Legion’s new premises were built, only to become the victim of an incendiary bombing raid in 1941. Also in that year the new purpose built fire station was opened, which served the town well for the next sixty years.

The Gasworks with ins distinctive gasholders, the Sidney Hall and the Rec, home of the Terras, have long since gone.

But…… behind the Gasworks, look at the wide open spaces, across the Marsh towards Lanehouse and Littlesea estates to be developed after the War, and a tantalising view of the Fleet.

Whilst still recognisable, so much of the once familiar scene has changed for ever.