The Home of UK Surf History
1934
1934
c1965
1967
1968
1968
1969
1969
1969
1973
1979
Photos are listed in order of the date they were added to the website collection, newest first.
Added to the website collection on Sep 07, 2011
Readers of Punch magazine in May 1934 would have seen this wonderful advert for the Morris Ten-Four saloon car describing it “as lively as a surf-board”. You’ll notice the surfers are holding ropes, and the type of board they would be using was known as an “aquaplane” – the precursor to the wakeboard that was ……»
Added to the website collection on Dec 04, 2010
SurFaari was a film made in 1969 by Clinton “Fitz” Fitzgerald while working for Clive Barber in South Africa, and showed for some of the first of the new, shorter v-bottom surfboards in use. Edited by Tony Cope the film was screened across North Devon that summer under the banner of Woolacombe-based West Coast Surfboards. ……»
Added to the website collection on Dec 04, 2010
Leaflet promoting the 1968 “National surf-board riding championships” at Bude in Cornwall and run by the Surf Life Saving Association of Great Britain, featuring “spectacular surfing by leading surfers”.
Added to the website collection on Dec 04, 2010
This 1968 guide to Woolacombe and Mortehoe uses a photo of a woman wading out into the sea to use her painted wooden bellyboard to promote the area as a holiday destination. This type of advertising showing the health-giving properties of surfing had been in use since the early 1900s.
Added to the website collection on Dec 04, 2010
Wonderful period artwork on this mid 1960s guide to Braunton & District in North Devon, still using the classic image of a woman with her bellyboard on the beach rather than ‘stand-up’ surfing that was beginning to take over at the time.
Added to the website collection on Dec 04, 2010
1967 holiday guide for Bude on the north Cornwall coast, describing it as a “surfing resort” with a photo on the cover showing a woman joyously holding her traditional wooden bellyboard aloft. Lots of surfing content inside, with the town and its businesses really trying to attract surfers in the mid 1960s.
Added to the website collection on Jul 16, 2010
Atlantic Surfer was first published in 1979 and lasted just 12 issues – this one features Britain’s first professional surfer the late Viscount Ted Deerhurst on the cover, surfing Sunset on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii. The Museum of British Surfing has Ted’s Lightning Bolt gun shaped by Tom Parrish that he’s riding in ……»
Added to the website collection on Jul 16, 2010
Written by Ronald S. Funnell in 1934 and reprinted in 1953, this is believed to be the first instructional surfing book published in Britain. It included tips on how and where to surf and beach safety. Funnell was also responsible for the Crest wooden surfboards produced in the 1930s.
Added to the website collection on Jun 01, 2010
This is the cover for the programme of the 1973 British surfing championships held at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire and featuring an awesome photo of Welshman Pete Jones surfing.
Added to the website collection on Jun 01, 2010
This is an advert on the back cover of the programme for the 1969 European surfing championships held in Britain. It shows sponsorship by a cigarette company that was quite common at the time, but wouldn’t be allowed today.
Added to the website collection on Jun 01, 2010
Bilbo surf shop paper bag (Newquay, Cornwall) c1969.