| Biography | Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne "Billy" Butlin (29 September 1899, Cape Town, South Africa 12 June 1980, Blair Adam House, Jersey) was a British, South Africa-born entrepreneur whose name is synonymous with the British holiday camp.Although holiday camps such as Warner's existed in one form or another before Butlin opened his first in 1936, it was Butlin who turned holiday camps into a multi-million pound industry and an important aspect of British culture. |