youth hostels, the history, people and ideas behind them
In England and Wales, 1150 youth hostels have been open at one time or another since 1930. That's a lot, and YHA’s honorary archivist, John Martin, has been researching and writing illustrated profiles of them for several years now. To date he's written 114 profiles, covering more than 200 hostels. Each profile is between one and... Continue Reading →
In June 1930 The Manchester Guardian reported a hostel had opened in Hope in the Peak District, months before the official Youth Hostels Association opened its first youth hostel in Wales. A group from Sheffield had taken the "stables of Birchfield", and opened a hostel with seven beds, a good water supply, pans and an... Continue Reading →
Len Clark was a young Londoner in 1939. When Europe lost all reason and lurched into war in September he had drifted into the pacifist camp. He debated the rights and wrongs of war, took long walks in the countryside and listened to his gramophone for solace. I love diaries. Diaries and letters offer the... Continue Reading →
May was an exciting and productive month for John Martin, YHA's honorary archivist. John writes about YHA's archive and its latest acquisitions and boxes and boxes of old records from the Lake District in this report. He came back from a recent trip to the Lake District laden with old files of fascinating material and... Continue Reading →
A letter from Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Party prime minister, turned up in old papers this week. The pages on which it was written are stiff, thick and yellow with age. An old fashioned treasury tag holds the typewritten pages together, and the paper smells faintly of decay. It slipped from a bundle of... Continue Reading →
SIMPLY HOSTELS 