Teglværket og badebroen GB


Hov Kalk - og Teglværk i begyndelsen af 1900 - tallet


Hov Strand. Badebroen. 1910

Intro

Here, by the tall fir trees and up as far as the grey house – once a dairy – is the site of the former lime and brickworks.

Here, by the tall fir trees and up as far as the grey house – once a dairy – is the site of the former lime and brickworks. The brickworks were built around 1880 by Rathlousdal manor, which owned most of the land around Hou, and they were demolished in 1928, since it was no longer possible to find clay of sufficiently good quality nearby. Lime stone was brought in from elsewhere, but the clay was quarried in the area along Skolegade in the village. Besides the brickworks, there were other businesses in this part of the harbour, including an old warehouse and a sawmill. Around 1900, near the present ferry port, a pier and some beach huts were built. The pier was built by Mrs Philippa Wahl, who owned a select guest house close to the harbour. This pier was intended for the more well-to-do citizens, but the beach and the sea could certainly also be enjoyed by the less well-off: In 1884, Hou Sea Baths saw the light of day at the initiative of the local landowner Emil von Holstein-Rathlou. This was an opportunity for the poor to enjoy a health-giving sea bath, and people of little or no means were admitted free of charge on their doctor’s recommendation. A pier of almost 100m formed part of the public baths. The pier needed to be this long to enable users to traverse the belt of seaweed and eelgrass (Zostera marina) that spread along the entire coastline, and it remained there until well into the 1930s. The public baths were opened shortly after the advent of the railway, and this led to a new kind of traffic emerging, namely the ‘bath train’ full of scrofulous children. Towards the end of the 1800s, tuberculosis was quite common, especially among schoolchildren from poor social backgrounds, and the railway provided free journeys to children, who had been ordered by their doctor to take healthy sea baths. In 1886 alone, 2,500 sick children and adults travelled by train to Hou in order to bathe. The scheme of free journeys continued until 1957, but in the latter years, all children travelled on the train free of charge.