Video: Celebrating the great Yorkshire seaside

THE English seaside resort ought to remain a haven for “quirky individualism and oddity” and continue to resist corporate blandness, according to a book which celebrates over 170 beaches from Whitby to Whitstable.
The cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-SeaThe cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-Sea
The cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-Sea

In a photographic odyssey Peter Williams captured many eccentric aspects of seaside culture, from palmists to Punch and Judy, as well as hidden gems which only those ‘in the know’ will have seen.

In The English Seaside, the former English Heritage photographer argues that resorts may have lost some of their traditional attractions but many are reinventing themselves.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The Derbyshire-born photographer says that stalwart of the bank holiday, “the grockle with knotted handkerchief hat, rolled-up corduroys and sandals with black socks” may be gone forever but all is not lost.

The cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-SeaThe cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-Sea
The cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-Sea

Yorkshire resorts are helping to show the way, he argues.

“There is continuing regeneration of sea fronts under way in resorts all round the coast. Bridlington has led the way with its emphasis on renewal rather than replication and Blackpool, Southport and Dover have exciting new esplanades.

“The Tate Gallery has revitalised St Ives and a similar effect is beginning to happen in Margate. Blyth, Whitehaven, Weston-super-Mare, Bude and Hastings, amongst others, have been transformed by the provision of new railings, seats, car parks and visitor information boards.”

Mr Williams warns against ‘gentrification’, arguing that whilst Suffolk resorts Aldeburgh and Southwold are lovely, they have become “the playgrounds for rich Londoners” which has led to “ridiculous” prices for beach huts.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Twenty years after he started his photographic project, the author urges us all to celebrate all that is good about the English seaside and to reject its image in the Press as being “tatty and moribund” and being the “Costa Geriatrica”

In contrast to the stereotype of the down-at-heel coastal town, he found seaside resorts and the people he met on his extensive travels to be “warm-hearted, welcoming and positive.”

His positive views are shared by historian John K Walton who, in a foreword to the book, concludes that the English seaside remains a haven for quirky individualism.

Mr Walton, a former Leeds Metropolitan University professor of social history, says there remains plenty of life in coastal towns, many of which are attractive to “desirable migrants” and are capable of creating new job opportunities.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Some are more buoyant than others and certain towns, or parts of them, are blighted by decline, decay and deprivation, not to mention drug dependency, vandalism and crime.

He doesn’t name the resorts stuck in this cycle, other than to say they are “mainly drawn from old provincial popular resorts which have lost their tourist markets to changes in demand flows over the last 40 years.”

Despite the gloomy future faced by a minority of coastal towns, Mr Walton says the evidence of regeneration has overturned the easy assumptions about the decline of English seaside tourism.

He points to a recent attempt to calculate tourism’s importance as an employer which found that in 2011 just over nine per cent of the British labour force worked in the industry.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“But despite its obvious importance, the coastal, unlike the rural, has never been a distinctive category in government planning at any level beyond the local, and it has suffered from a persisting lack of official understanding of or receptivity to its peculiarities and needs,” he adds.

He concludes that it may not always be in the most robust of health, but there is still plenty of life in the English seaside.

“The English seaside continues to resist incursions by corporate blandness: despite some aspects of regeneration schemes, it remains a haven for quirky individualism and oddity. Here are some of the advantages that accrue to ‘places on the margin’. Long may this continue, and continue to be celebrated.”

• The English Seaside, £14.99, is published by English Heritage.