Margate's Seaside Heritage

Margate's Seaside Heritage
Author: Nigel Barker
Publisher: Historic England
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1848023081

The seaside holiday and the seaside resort are two of England's greatest exports to the world. Since the early 18th century, when some of the wealthiest people first sought improved health by bathing in saltwater, the lure of the sea has been a fundamental part of the British way of life, and millions of people still head to the coast each year. Margate has an important place in the story of seaside holidays. It vies with Scarborough, Whitby and Brighton for the title of England's first seaside resort, and it was the first to offer sea-water baths to visitors. Margate can also claim other firsts, including the first Georgian square built at a seaside resort (Cecil Square), the first substantial seaside development outside the footprint of an historic coastal town, the site of the world's first sea-bathing hospital, and, as a result of its location along the Thames from London, the first popular resort frequented by middle- and lower-middle-class holidaymakers. It is unlikely that Margate will ever attract the vast numbers of visitors that flocked there in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, with growing concerns about the environmental effects of air travel and a continuing awareness of the threat of excessive exposure to the sun, the English seaside holiday may enjoy some form of revival. If Margate finds ways to renew itself while retaining its historic identity, it may once again become a vibrant destination for holidays, as well as being an attractive place for people to live and work.

Weymouth's Seaside Heritage

Weymouth's Seaside Heritage
Author: Allan Brodie
Publisher: Historic England
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1848023170

With Weymouth and Portland hosting the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games sailing events, the profile of the area will be raised considerably in the years leading up to the Games. Weymouth's seaside history and heritage will be a focus of attention and will contribute significantly to the regeneration of the town in the coming years. Weymouth has been a popular seaside resort for over 250 years. Likened to Montpelier and Naples for its natural beauty and healthy climate, it received the endorsement of King George III. His presence helped the town to expand rapidly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, resulting in a stunning legacy of seafront terraces that continue to provide accommodation for thousands of holidaymakers each year. Weymouth boasts an eclectic mix of medieval town planning, harbour-side industry and former military sites that have had an impact on the town's development as a seaside resort. Many of the buildings associated with declining brewing and maritime industries have now been redeveloped and serve as amenities and accommodation for residents and visitors. An English Heritage opinion poll in 2007 found that seventy-five per cent of respondents felt that 'the historic character of seaside towns is what makes them beautiful and enjoyable'. This book describes the colourful story of Weymouth's seaside history and the buildings and open spaces that survive to tell this story. It also demonstrates how the historic environment can play an important part in the future development of the town.

Margate Through Time

Margate Through Time
Author: Anthony Lee
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2012-09-15
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1445629461

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Margate has changed and developed over the last century

Travel and Tourism in Britain, 1700–1914 Vol 4

Travel and Tourism in Britain, 1700–1914 Vol 4
Author: Susan Barton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000559858

The British led the way in holidaymaking. This four-volume primary resource collection brings together a diverse range of texts on the various forms of transport used by tourists, the destinations they visited, the role of entertainments and accommodation and how these affected the way that tourism evolved over two centuries. Volume 4: Seaside Resorts The final volume presents case studies of four major seaside resorts: Scarborough, Margate, Brighton and Blackpool. Scarborough evolved from a spa town to a seaside resort. Margate became a coastal resort from scratch and became one of the earliest sites of mass tourism. Brighton had sea bathers by the 1730s and its early development followed a similar path to that of Margate, but its royal connections allowed its rapid growth into a large town with high quality accommodation. When the railway arrived at Blackpool in 1846 it was a large village. Thirty years later it had two piers and a large hotel. Its steady growth was due to the stream of working class visitors from the local hinterland of major industrial towns and cities.

Ramsgate

Ramsgate
Author: Geraint Franklin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9781789621891

For over 250 years people have headed to Ramsgate for a day at the seaside - and discovered much more in the process. This book charts Ramsgate's transformation from quiet fishing village to a 'harbour of refuge' and seaside resort, driven by the town's strategic position on the east Kent coast. Once visited by a handful of intrepid sea bathers, improvements in passenger boats and the arrival in 1846 of the railway opened up the resort to thousands of holidaymakers, necessitating new bathing facilities and entertainment venues. Early 19th century Ramsgate was patronised by royalty and boasted up-to-date terraces, crescents and squares. The town attracted minority faith communities, represented by the synagogue completed in 1833 for Sir Moses Montefiore and A. W. N. Pugin's Roman Catholic church of St Augustine (1845-50). This wide-ranging, accessible study tells the story of Ramsgate's rich maritime and seaside heritage. It also profiles the challenges and opportunities that the town faces today in seeking to redefine itself as an attractive place to visit, live and work. Ramsgate: the town and its seaside heritage combines documentary research with insights derived from the town's fascinating architectural heritage, illustrated with new and archival photographs.

Blackpool's Seaside Heritage

Blackpool's Seaside Heritage
Author: Allan Brodie
Publisher: Historic England
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1848023278

Blackpool is Britain's favourite seaside resort. Each year millions of visitors come to walk on its three piers, ride donkeys, enjoy shows at the Winter Gardens, scream on the thrilling rides at the Pleasure Beach and ride the lift to the top of the Tower. Generations of holidaymakers have stayed in its hotels, lodging houses and bed and breakfasts and all have succumbed to its delectable fish and chips. Two centuries of tourism has left behind a rich heritage, but Blackpool has also inherited a legacy of social and economic problems, as well as the need for comprehensive new sea defences to protect the heart of the town. In recent years this has led to the transformation of its seafront and to regeneration programmes to try to improve the town, for its visitors and residents. This book celebrates Blackpool's rich heritage and examines how its colourful past is playing a key part in guaranteeing that it has a bright future.

Restaging the Future

Restaging the Future
Author: Louise Owen
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2023-12-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0810146061

An examination of neoliberal ideology’s ascendance in 1990s and 2000s British politics and society through its effect on state-supported performance practices Post-Thatcher, British cultural politics were shaped by the government’s use of the arts in service of its own social and economic agenda. Restaging the Future: Neoliberalization, Theater, and Performance in Britain interrogates how arts practices and cultural institutions were enmeshed with the particular processes of neoliberalization mobilized at the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Louise Owen traces the uneasy entanglement of performance with neoliberalism's marketization of social life. Focusing on this political moment, Owen guides readers through a wide range of performance works crossing multiple forms, genres, and spaces—from European dance tours, to Brazilian favelas, to the streets of Liverpool—attending to their distinct implications for the reenvisioned future in whose wake we now live. Analyzing this array of participatory dance, film, music, public art, and theater projects, Owen uncovers unexpected affinities between community-based, experimental, and avant-garde movements. Restaging the Future provides key historical context for these performances, their negotiations of their political moment, and their themes of insecurity, identity, and inequality, created in a period of profound ideological and socioeconomic change.

Travel and Tourism in Britain, 1700–1914 Vol 3

Travel and Tourism in Britain, 1700–1914 Vol 3
Author: Susan Barton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 100055984X

The British led the way in holidaymaking. This four-volume primary resource collection brings together a diverse range of texts on the various forms of transport used by tourists, the destinations they visited, the role of entertainments and accommodation and how these affected the way that tourism evolved over two centuries. Volume 3: Seaside Holidays Over the course of the seventeenth century, medical writers and practitioners came to realise the health-giving properties of the seaside environment. By the early eighteenth century, this scientific interest was spreading to wealthy people in search of a rest cure. Bathing in the sea, drinking the waters and spending time in the bracing air became a widespread activity, and by the nineteenth century this had expanded thanks to extensive advertising and publicity about its beneficial effects. Specific forms of entertainment also developed, such as piers, aquaria, winter gardens and cinemas.

The Lure of the Beach

The Lure of the Beach
Author: Robert C. Ritchie
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520215958

A human and global take on a beloved vacation spot. The crash of surf, smell of salted air, wet whorls of sand underfoot. These are the sensations of the beach, that environment that has drawn humans to its life-sustaining shores for millennia. And while the gull’s cry and the cove’s splendor have remained constant throughout time, our relationship with the beach has been as fluid as the runnels left behind by the tide’s turning. The Lure of the Beach is a chronicle of humanity's history with the coast, taking us from the seaside pleasure palaces of Roman elites and the aquatic rituals of medieval pilgrims, to the venues of modern resort towns and beyond. Robert C. Ritchie traces the contours of the material and social economies of the beach throughout time, covering changes in the social status of beach goers, the technology of transport, and the development of fashion (from nudity to Victorianism and back again), as well as the geographic spread of modern beach-going from England to France, across the Mediterranean, and from nineteenth-century America to the world. And as climate change and rising sea levels erode the familiar faces of our coasts, we are poised for a contemporary reckoning with our relationship—and responsibilities—to our beaches and their ecosystems. The Lure of the Beach demonstrates that whether as a commodified pastoral destination, a site of ecological resplendency, or a flashpoint between private ownership and public access, the history of the beach is a human one that deserves to be told now more than ever before.

England's Seaside Heritage from the Air

England's Seaside Heritage from the Air
Author: Allan Brodie
Publisher: Historic England
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2021-05
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781800859647

As an island nation, Britain is quick to celebrate its maritime history and heritage, but for most of us our relationship with the sea is through the seaside resort. We share more or less fond memories of building sand castles, splashing around in the sea and eating fish and chips, sometimes with a light sprinkle of sand as an accompaniment. However, the vast majority of holidaymakers will never have seen a seaside resort from the air, unless they have gone up in the balloon in the centre of Bournemouth or indulged in a pleasure flight over a resort such as Weston-super-Mare. This collection of aerial photographs, produced by Aerofilms Ltd mostly between 1920 and 1953, tells the story of England's seaside resorts as holiday destinations, but also as working towns, blessed with the sea as their backdrop. It also illustrates the type of entertainments available for holidaymakers and highlights how the seaside holiday at some resorts became big business with industrial-scale facilities and infrastructure.