High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne ("Billy") Butlin, (29 September 1899 – 12 June 1980), 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.