London by the Sea - Part 2

I said that I would have another look at the article by Brighton academic Sue Farrant  - "London by the Sea" - with its analysis of the development of Sussex's coastal resorts from 1880 to 1939.  I wrote about what she said about Eastbourne specifically in my earlier blog.  I'm now going to cover some of her broader analysis.

We start at the beginning of the Nineteenth century.  Coastal resorts across the country tend to be places solely for the aristocracy or otherwise wealthy.  In Sussex, we see Brighton and Hastings already established as fashionable resorts.  Smaller settlements are scattered about the coast elsewhere, but their facilities are limited.  

What starts the change is industrialization.  This creates new social and economic groups, in particular those working in services.  Members of these groups have some disposable income, and the time and wish to take holidays.  Existing coastal resorts start to change to cater for these new visitors.  And new resorts are built, to meet the overall increase in demand. 

The outcome is specific resorts favoured by different social classes.  And in some resorts, the seasons are segregated along similar lines.   

Resorts also grow into substantial residential towns.  Convalescent homes come too, as do private schools.  A tension emerges between those whose livelihood depends on visitors, and permanent residents whose priority is to maintain the character (and social "tone") of their town.   

These trends are seen most obviously in Sussex.  Its resorts are closest to London - where this new demand is greater than elsewhere. Since Sussex has no industry, the coastal resorts can draw on under-used rural labour from the Weald to work on construction sites and enable rapid development.  The population more generally migrates to the seaside.

These broad forces affect all the Sussex resorts.  They all have differing starting points, before developing in their separate ways.  But they can be split up into four broad categories.  

Brighton and Hastings, the older resorts, are able to adapt quickly to the widening market and build on earlier success.  Brighton's industry and employment is not solely dependent on tourism.  But Hastings' is, and suffers dire unemployment in bad years - a theme picked up in Robert Tressell's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists".  

The progress of the smaller Georgian resorts - Seaford, Bognor and Worthing - is stuttering.  Development companies fail before completing their projects. 

The fashionable self-contained settlements built alongside bigger resorts - St. Leonards and Hove, and Brunswick Town - develop in different ways:  St. Leonards is absorbed by Hastings; Hove maintains its independence from Brighton.  It thrives.  

The Victorian new towns of Eastbourne and Bexhill, covered in my earlier blog, benefit from active and determined local landowners.  They maintain their high social status up to the Edwardian period and beyond.

From 1914, as we saw in Hastings, the problem facing all these resorts was seasonal unemployment.  But some towns compensated with specialist services and independent manufacturing.  The other constraint was lack of any other means of transport but the train. This meant facilities were over-concentrated in inner towns and the central seafront areas.

From the 1920s, all the resorts grew as a result of the boom in building.  Cheap farm land was released for development.  Capital was available to invest.  Emerging modes of travel - car and bus, as well as the growing train network - enabled large-scale private and council house-building further out from centres.  At the same time, pressure groups formed to lobby for greater protection of nearby threatened downland and otherwise precious green spaces.

From the 1930s, two new rivals emerged.  First, the so-called "planned" resorts.  Second, the more informal, dispersed coastal developments.   

Examples of the former were Goring Park near Worthing and Ham Manor near Littlehampton.  These were carefully laid out, socially-zoned estates, both built in grounds of large vacated country houses.  

Informal, unplanned resorts - for example Selsey Bill and Camber Sands - were made up of scattered railway carriages, buses, huts and bungalows.  Such settlements were only accessible to car owners.  They had a marked and controversial effect on remote coastal spots.  

Peacehaven was perhaps the most infamous example of this.  Planned initially in a grid lay-out, it developed haphazardly, absent of effective planning controls.  Small houses were built in purchased plots, scattered untidily over a large area.  For planners working for local authorities all along the coast, Peacehaven became a lesson in exactly how not do it.

So where does this leave our investigation of Eastbourne?  What we know now is that its early years were driven by wider social, demographic and economic forces which affected similar settlements nearby.  We're slowly accumulating further articles and books to help us understand this better.

More in due course.