self-catering

In England and Wales (and Ireland before 1923), church was a term of legal significance: it could only be applied to a building belonging to the Church of England (or Ireland) by law established; all other religious buildings, be they never so grand, were in law chapels. Whether this meant 'Catholic' or 'non-conformist Protestant' in ordinary speech would naturally depend on how many of each sort were around. Even in Ireland, the older generation (I'm told) still avoids going to church in favor of going to Mass or chapel.

When the Welsh Church was disestablished in 1920 (the opposition to this being known of course as anti-disestablishmentarianism), the law doing so referred to the "properties of the Church [of England] in Wales", with the odd effect that Welsh Anglicanism is now called The Church in Wales rather than of Wales.

Robbie, I thought that was the point I'd made!

This might be a good place to note the UK-US difference in "bed and breakfast".

In the UK, a B&B means basic digs. It's a place to sleep and put your bags, and have breakfast in the morning (and maybe dinner in the evening at extra cost), and that's pretty much it. Useful when passing through a town for a day or two, or as a base for a very cheap holiday for students or broke young couples.

In the US, a B&B is usually a pricey private hotel with lots of frills and furbelows. You're expected to consider it a destination in itself, a fancy hotel combined with a homely or family feel.

I've come across a new term in the eastern US: Modified American Plan. That is breakfast and dinner included with the room.

Super-8s these days have a reasonable breakfast, with yogourt and waffles and toast and muffins (cupcake-sized raised sweetened bread, often with nuts or fruit in them) and English muffins (round flat plainish things with holes to soak up lots of butter).

Lynne, it warms my heart that your hometown is Newark. I'll have to check out the B&B next time I'm home visiting my family in Palmyra.

Darcherd, actually I was quoting Lynne in the first part of my post and my own comment was from a UK perspective. It's a good few years since I was last in America. Off the top of my head I don't remember ever getting breakfast included with a room there. (Of course there was free ice in volumes you'd never see here in the UK!)

I (Am) also recall the "American Plan" and "European Plan" descriptions from my youth, but one scarcely encounters them anymore on the left side of the pond.

Shuan Clarkson is correct that North American hotels are increasingly offering breakfast as part of the price of a room, though the phenomenon seems to be restricted primarily to the mid-range hotels, particularly those chains which cater to families and private travelers(Comfort Inn, Best Western, Shilo, Rodeway, etc.) If low-end chains such as Super8 offer "breakfast" it's likely to be bad coffee and a cellophone-wrapped danish with a sell-by date measured in centuries.

And hotels catering to the business traveler and luxury market almost never include breakfast because such guests are either on an expense account or don't need to count their pennies, and thus the hotel can increase its gross margin handily from high-priced breakfasts served to a more-or-less captive audience.

I'm currently seeing an ad for self-catering apartments on the front page. It has the slogan, "Your at home seriously".

Leaving aside the "your" vs. "you're" issue, I would think that being anywhere "seriously" might be less than a sparkling endorsement in the eyes of someone looking for a vacation/holiday.

Note: Before re-reading this comment, I had "ringing endorsement". I don't think that "ringing … in the eyes" quite conveyed the image I wanted, though.

In the Republic of Ireland "RC chapel" came off the Ordnance Survey maps after 1922. And the "cabins" of the peasantry became "cottages"; the large two-storey country cottages of England could never be called cottages over here.

@ Cameron: This is true in Northern Ireland, too, but in Southern England a "chapel" tends to be non-conformist! Confusing, or what?

In Glasgow (and possibly the rest of Scotland, although I doubt it) a chapel is always and specifically a Catholic church, sometimes rhyming slanged as "the pineapple". As a boy it confused me to hear the churches in places like Edinburgh Castle referred to as "St. Margaret's Chapel" and the like.

@Bill - I doubt a catholic would have darkened a protestant church's doors, but within the protestant (and particularly the non-conformist protestants, i.e. not Anglicans) the minor distinctions between the various 'chapels' would have been easier to overcome.

"but was not so fervent as to insist on searching for its own denomination in a strange resort"

Now this is a small point that I find fascinating…of course, I was riased Roman Catholic, so I may be ignorant of this sort of thing…but going to a different denomination's church just sounds completely out of left field to me. Is this a common thing? In either the UK OR US? (Not meaning to hijack the comments with this.)

—-"The UK holiday camps date from the post-war era when money was tight, standards and aspirations were lower … they resembled barracks or miltary training camps."—–Nope. Butlin's first holiday camp was opened before the war in 1936 in Skegness, and there were ones before.

The reason Butlin founded his, and the reason they became popular, was the awfulness of that archetypal British Institution the seaside landlady. It was standard for the harridan to throw all guests out during the day, which with British summers was a recipe for 'Misery, oh misery!'.

Holiday camps weren't the most downmarket, which would be the tents and caravan parks, but they would have been looked down on as 'common' by the lower-middle classes, and thus were the enclave of the working and upper-working classes.

You actually had the choice of full-board, half-board and self-catering at many of the camps.

My Dad had a stroke of genius when he built his church on the other side of the road opposite the beach about fifty yards from the Prestatyn Holiday camp on the other side. Until the end of the sixties the Northern Working class was very religious and wouldn't have dreamt of not going to church on a Sunday, but was not so fervent as to insist on searching for its own denomination in a strange resort, so my Dad's church bagged pretty well the lot of them in Summer.

So rather more like the 'camp' in Dirty Dancing then, biochemist?

Bill - the 'Holiday Camp' in the song is not related to Anonymous's gathering of friends for huge communal (self-catered) meals! Oh no!
The UK holiday camps date from the post-war era when money was tight, standards and aspirations were lower … they resembled barracks or miltary training camps. Families stayed in 'chalets' and were woken by tannoy to begin the day with communal breakfast, various activities, communal lunch, sporting activities, communal supper, home-made entertainment from the 'Red Coats' (at Butlin's camps) or similar staff at other camps (Pontin's was the other big name). Glamorous Granny competitions, ballroom dancing, talent contests - when some now-famous acts received their first chance - were part of the evening revues. It all sounds horribly unsophisticated and rather down-market now, but it served a need for fun and meeting new people when the nation was emerging from six grim years.

"I'm finding that increasingly one can get a room in a hotel without breakfast in the UK (for a lower price), just as in the US provision of included-in-the-price breakfast (or at least doughnuts and coffee) has increased."

I'd expect as a default that a motel style chain such as Travelodge would be room only, but a 'proper' hotel would have at least a continental breakfast included. That said the latter doesn't always happen in practice.

@ David. I've only ever once found a self-catering kitchen that really lives up to my standards, and would never dream of going to a strange place without at the very least a wooden spoon, a tin-opener and a knife-sharpener! And, arguably, a corkscrew. One place we go to, I need to take serving-spoons, as well as a sharp knife (we drive there, so I can). And, of course, salt, pepper, herbs, proper coffee and my "manual" coffee filter….

I'm with mollymooly on this one - your decree should be promulgated to all holiday companies! Self-catering ought to mean proper cooking equipment, and in my experience it always has (even in Greece when the brochure said facilities might be limited) but maybe I've been lucky.

Thus I (Br) would never describe a hotel room as self-catering, whether or not meals were provided by the hotel. Since Americans can choose to stay in a hotel or rent a cottage, I can't buy Lynne's explanation that the distinction isn't relevant in the US because of the absence of full board as a standard arrangement.

I'd also like to suggest that package holidays are a red herring - packageness is a different quality and you can have any combination of package/non-package, self-catering/non-self-catering.

To digress: a great advantage of self-catering is that you can cook local goodies (samphire from the beach, fish from the market). The downside can be dissatisfaction with my kitchen at home when, as has occasionally happened, I've encountered a better equipped and organised one on holiday! (Some friends once rented a very posh holiday cottage whose kitchen contained a chain-mail mitten. Its purpose, I guessed, was to hold oysters while you prise them open. At £205.00 from Amazon, that item's not in my batterie de cuisine.)

Oops, saved prematurely.

Googling for "tourist home" shows a lot of places using both tourist home and B&B in their names; the term is also very common in the Indian subcontinent, seemingly.

While the term B&B is fairly new to North America, the concept isn't. Tourist homes have been around a long time (my 89-year-old father-in-law, staying in a B&B, called it that), and boarding houses (which of course normally provide full board) go back to colonial days.

For me, "self-catering" can't just be a token keetle and microwave. There must [I have just decreed] be sufficient cooking and dining equipment to produce a sit-down three-course meal for four people. [Not that you are obliged to do so, of course.] A fortiori, a camping holiday is not "self-catering", even if you hunt and gather all your own meals.

Also, "self-catering" may be in a standalone cottage or villa; but it may also be in a complex of chalets or apartments. Sometimes such a complex will also include catered accommodation.

@Neil: google searching .co.uk
* for "self-catered": about 26,200
* for "self-catering": about 1,510,000

I will assume that this sort of thing is what they are referring to in the Movie of The Who's Tommy when they sing about a "Holiday Camp"
I made that assumption long ago but it is nice to think that I guessed right.

Not just Butlins, Nick, but the traditional hotel holiday or the old-fashioned "seaside landlady" would have provided meals.

I'm shortly off to Shropshire with a group of friends who have been going there for many years to sing together for a week. Until recently we stayed in what we always described as "holiday flats" (due to the sale of that property, we have moved to some farm cottages). Although we do sometimes eat out, a feature of the week is cooking huge communal meals!
Kate (UK)

Does AmE use the terms 'half board' and 'full board', which are often used in BrE for hotel stays and package holidays?
Half board = breakfast and dinner included; full board = all meals included - presumably these are the equivalent of 'American Plan' and 'Modified American Plan'?