The seaside towns we know and love are the result of centuries of changing holiday fashions. The things we expect to find there – the buildings, promenades, and even the food culture – are derived from the preferences of our forebears. Many of the attractions and treats they favoured have become staples of our own seaside experiences. Some hang on as mere remnants, others survive with almost iconic status.
Sandcastles, donkeys, piers,and sticks of rock. Beach huts, grand hotels, comic postcards and ice cream cones. All of these things have their own history which, added together, makes the seaside the distinctive place it is today. In my new book, I focus on 100 objects which tell our national seaside story from the 18th to the 21st century.
Seaside culture originated in the Georgian trend for medicinal sea bathing. Whatever ailed you, there was a doctor willing to prescribe a health-giving trip to his own stretch of shore. A medic from Lewes, Dr. Richard Russell, became the best-known advocate after he published A Dissertation on the Use of SeaWater in the Diseases of the Glands, particularly, The Scurvy, Jaundice, King’s Evil, Leprosy and the Glandular Consumption in 1750. Russell sent his patients to nearby Brighton and their aristocratic status set the town on its rise to fame and fortune.
Denne historien er fra August 2020-utgaven av Sussex Life.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra August 2020-utgaven av Sussex Life.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
TAKE YOUR TIME
Dean Edwards’ new cookbook features delectable recipes that you can slow cook or stick in the oven. Here’s a selection of the best
Decorative art
Not simply functional, treat your walls like an extension of your personality
ON THE FRONT FOOT
The rugby legend took the reins at Sussex County Cricket Club in 2017, rekindling his love for a sport that first won his heart on the village cricket fields of North Yorkshire
NAKED AMBITION
In the 1980s, Christine and Jennifer Binnie partied with Boy George and Marilyn and bared all as performance art collective The Neo-Naturists. Now they are working together to gain the recognition they feel they deserve
ROCKET MAN
Astronaut Tim Peake has come a long way since growing up in Westbourne and attending Chichester High School for Boys: 248 miles above Earth, to be precise. But, he says, life on the International Space Station has a lot in common with family caravanning holidays
Revolution man
Lewes’ most famous resident Thomas Paine may be the greatest propagandist who ever lived. But how did a humble customs and excise officer ignite the touchpaper for revolution in not one but two countries?
THE DIARY
17 exciting things to do this month in East and West Sussex
All in a day's work
Meet Tim Dummer, who has helped keep Midhurst’s Cowdray Estate shipshape for an impressive five decades
My favourite Sussex
Bruce Fogle is an author and a vet with a practice in London who has lived in West Sussex with his wife, the actress Julia Foster, since 1989. He recently became president of RSPCA Mount Noddy near Chichester
10 OF THE BEST Meat-free restaurants in Brighton and Hove
Brighton is often rated one of the most vegan-friendly cities in the UK. What these restaurants prove is that plant-based food doesn’t have to be puritanical – at all of these places you’ll find big flavours and a desire to push the envelope
