page_title: Butlins Redcoats
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Butlins Redcoats / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Holiday Camp Gets Going Again- Everyday Life at a Butlin's Holiday Camp, Filey, Yorkshire, England, UK, 1945 A team of twelve Red Coats stride towards the camera, arm-in-arm in the sunshine, as they prepare for another days work at the Butlin's Holiday Camp at Filey. The job of the Red Coats, according to the original caption, is "to see to it that each individual camper has a jolly time, twelve hours on end, each day of the Butlin hospitality". They are walking past the Gloucester House Dining Hall, located on the south side of the camp.
context_page_description: Redcoat is the name given to frontline staff at Butlins holiday camps in the UK. A Redcoat has duties ranging from adult entertainer or children's entertainer to stewarding.
context_section_description: The first Redcoat was Norman Bradford. When Sir Billy Butlin opened his first Butlin's in Skegness he realised that his guests were not engaging with activities in the way he had envisioned: most kept to themselves, and others looked bored. He asked Bradford — who was engaged as an engineer, constructing the camp — to take on the duty of entertaining the guests which he did with a series of icebreakers and jokes. By the end of the night the camp was buzzing and the Butlins atmosphere was born.
  The same night Butlin decided that for his camp to work he would require an army of people to carry out the same job as Norman, and the role of Redcoat was formed.
caption: Redcoats at Butlins Filey in 1947. For those watching in black and white,  all but the figure on second right are redcoats.
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