Margate, Kent
I have just finished reading "The Seaside" by Madeleine Bunting. It is not a novel. It is an affectionate but searching investigation of modern English seaside resorts with reference to history, poverty and regeneration projects. The book was very well-researched as the bibliography and notes testify but of course Madeleine Bunting also visited the resorts and talked to many people.
You might say that the English invented the seaside resort and out on the periphery of our island there are numerous distinctive seaside towns. They range from big, noisy resorts like Blackpool, Lancashire to smaller and more dignified coastal towns like Aldeburgh in Suffolk and Hornsea, Yorkshire.
There are not many English seaside resorts that I have not visited and partly for that reason, I found "The Seaside" pretty engaging.
Skegness, Lincolnshire
I guess that the heyday of the English seaside resort was between the two world wars. Working people flocked there in their holidays, staying in boarding houses and cheap hotels. There were theatres, pubs, pleasure gardens, amusement arcades and of course the inevitable fish and chips.
You could buy sticks of pink rock and cowboy hats with "Kiss Me Quick" printed on the front because at the seaside you could let your hair down, away from the usual restrictions of real life back in our industrial inland towns and cities. In English summers, the people filled our seaside resorts to bursting point.
It's not like that today. Nowadays, most of the bigger seaside resorts are struggling. They contain hidden poverty, drug addiction, common health problems and low life expectancy. Many of the old boarding houses were turned into "Homes of Multiple Occupancy" long ago. The inland English working class now pay for holidays in the sun - flying to Spain and Greece. Vacations that their grandparents could never have imagined taking.
I think the following extract from the book neatly sums up Madeleine Bunting's analysis:-
It's hard to make sense of the paradoxes of the English seaside resort: our
deep affection and appreciation alongside the neglect, decline and deprivation.
A place of second chances and last chances; a place for some to realise
their most cherished dreams and for others to find despair. (p321)
Fisherman resting on the beach at Hornsea, Yorkshire
It's so sad that these towns have now fallen out of favour. I've been to Hastings, Eastbourne, and Bexhill on Sea, and enjoyed walking along the beaches.
ReplyDeleteHastings is addressed in the book - an intense pocket of poverty exists there.
DeleteWe lived for many years down on the West Sussex coast in what was once a popular retirement destination town. Sadly, at around the time we left, many homeless and/or jobseekers were transferred down from London boroughs as the local authorities had no places left to house them. The first time we returned to visit our ex-next door neighbours, we were shocked to see how many men were just sitting outside on the seaside benches and on the pavements in and around the shopping centre, swigging from bottles wrapped in brown paper and looking generally the worse for wear. There were also obvious signs of a drug problem amongst the younger inhabitants too. Walking around at night was not a comfortable experience. It was sad to see the town's decline.
ReplyDeleteWas that Worthing or perhaps Bognor Regis?
DeleteI wonder whether the seaside, or at least some resorts, will have a resurgence because of cost and climate change.
ReplyDeleteWith climate change it is likely that Sheffield and Shepley will, in the future, become seaside resorts.
DeleteI've visited many British seaside towns and seen some of that deprivation, but even then they're often more pleasant than I expect them to be. I think I've heard so many horror stories that when I find I can enjoy them it's a pleasant surprise. Then again I'm usually not walking around at night.
ReplyDeleteI love Scarborough and Whitby where genuine poverty and connected social issues are present but kind of hidden from view.
DeleteIt is sad to see the decline of so many coastal towns. Some are on the rise, with well-heeled Londoners, but I think they're in the minority.
ReplyDeleteBrighton is one resort that definitely bucks the trend Janice.
DeleteI'm surprised that seaside towns are not popular there as I would think people in the cities would love to spend time on the beach.
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit more complicated than that Ellen. English people still love the seaside but they tend to go for day trips - not booking a week's stay in a boarding house. Also nowadays many resorts have vast trailer parks on the outskirts and it is more economical to stay there.
DeleteTime marches on. Things change. She sounds like she did her
ReplyDeletehome work on this issue.
Madeline Bunting is a very good author. Her book 'The Plot' was about an area of North Yorkshire I knew well. It was about her father, a sculptor, he worked at Ampleforth College. The Plot was about an acre of land he had bought with a disused chapel on it. Here he worked in stone, and if you type 'Madeline Bunting' into my search facility, something should come up. She also wrote about the Hebridean Islands. Funnily enough Lillie, with 11 of her friends has just gone off to Whitby. She loves Whitby, probably the last baby to be born in the old hospital there. The town has so much character amassed over the centuries it just pulls people in for fish and chips and is so lenient towards dogs much to my daughter's fury ;)
ReplyDeleteSteve and I loved our annual week in "Scarbie", based on the tradition started by his parents who would stroll South and North Bay in a pretty summer dress and a full suit and tie (so much for letting one's hair down) in the 1950s.
ReplyDeleteEven then, around 20 years ago, Scarborough showed many a boarded up shop front, and we didn't like being out after dark - it was a very different place then, with loads of young, heavily drunk people about.
A lot has been done to improve and renovate, but I haven't been back since Steve died.
Having been to most seaside resorts will you now cross the border and visit those in Scotland and Wales? Then you could write your own book.
ReplyDeleteI think they would do better if your weather wasn't so variable, but nothing can be done about that. A couple of seaside towns we visited seemed ok, but I think the people, like us, were just day visitors, not payers of accommodation..
ReplyDeleteAgree with Andrew, the typically English holiday weather certainly didn't help, nor did the sudden rise of very cheap all inclusive package deals to Spain in the 1960's. Nowadays so many of us are used to just hopping on a plane and arriving somewhere more "exotic", with better weather than a fortnight in Blackpool or Bognor - and cheaper drinks! With British tourists no longer welcome in many popular resorts maybe the UK seaside will become the place to be!
ReplyDeleteI think of places in Australia which have been down on their luck and then revitalised and I think surely the English seaside resorts could do the same. But of course the success stories are a minority.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad but I guess time moves on and pretty much every kind of "institution" eventually falls away
Hard to imagine such decline. Here in Florida, all the seaside areas are almost completely taken over by the wealthy who build houses and then never seem to stay in them. Rental rates on the beach are almost unaffordable to most.
ReplyDeleteHard to quite grasp that my own visits to British seaside resorts (or anywhere in the UK for that matter) were all more than half a century ago now!
ReplyDeleteI love a good non-fiction narrative. This book could inspire a long trip around the coasts of Britain.
ReplyDeleteWe moved to Bournemouth a few years ago to be near to family and were unable to find the centre of the town, I think the heart has been ripped out of it. Where are the interesting shops? What do holidaymakers do when it rains? Locals tell me that is was so much better even ten years ago. The beach is wonderful, but the town a very sad state of affairs.
ReplyDelete