Huck magazine reports from inside one of the UK’s last nudist communities.
“Clothing is conformity” — Peaking in popularity in the mid-20th century, the alternative lifestyle movement, which promises freedom from traditional societal expectations, faces extinction as self-image anxiety rises and technologies change.
To quote Grant, a resident: “Naturism is about the freedom to live the way nature intended, apart from when it’s bloody cold.”
Spielplatz sits quietly in the woods near St Albans, but step through the gate and the illusion of an ordinary holiday village slips away. People wander the paths naked — cooking, gardening, answering emails — not for shock value, but because it’s simply how life works here. The community has been doing this since 1929, ever since Charles and Dorothy Macaskie set out to build a naturist haven inspired by early German ideas of living closer to nature.
Their grandson Grant now runs the place, and he talks about naturism with an easy certainty: it’s not about sex, it’s about stripping away the status symbols stitched into clothing. Residents echo that sentiment. Tom relishes the freedom of not signalling anything with what he wears. Victoria admits she was nervous at first, but seeing real, unfiltered bodies — and being seen — changed how she thought about her own.
There’s a gentle honesty to the place. People make tea nude, fix things nude, dance at parties nude. Life becomes strangely simpler once the costume of everyday life falls away. And yet, even as Spielplatz thrives, naturism in the UK is fading. Younger generations, shaped by social media and body anxiety, rarely join, and clubs have quietly closed.
That’s what makes Spielplatz feel almost defiant. It’s a tiny community holding onto the idea that we don’t have to buy our way into confidence or comfort — that being at ease in your skin is something you can practise, not purchase. After a while there, Grant’s favourite line starts to make sense: when everybody’s naked, nobody is.
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