I am writing this from one of my favourite places in England: Ilfracombe, the North Devon town where we have holidayed for the past seven years. We come primarily for Joey’s ice-creams and fishing. This year my husband, three sons and two of their mates have caught conger eels, rays, dog fish, sand eels for bait, crabs, mackerel, dab, a bull huss, pollack and sea bass. While they fish, I saunter about and panic about Ilfracombe’s decaying Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architecture. It struck me for the first time this year that Ilfracombe and other seaside towns are microcosms of England at large, where the essential – magnificent – infrastructure has been neglected to the point of decay and we barbarians live amongst its ruins.
Perhaps like me you’ve always wondered whether the people in the Dark Ages knew they were living in the Dark Ages, or breezily convinced themselves their society was better than the one that preceded it. Following a childhood trip to Rome, I was convinced the Visigoths, Vandals and those forgotten Alans would stumble past ravaged temples, dry aqueducts, empty municipal buildings tearing their hair out wailing, “what have we done?” Now I realise Dark Ages dwellers would have behaved as we currently do – simply not realising they lived amongst the decaying detritus of a once great civilisation; they were too busy earning a crust and getting pissed.
This terrifying thought came to me on this morning’s walk from our holiday rental to Ilfracombe’s beautiful harbour to buy some souvenir fudge in Roly’s Fudge Pantry. I passed Ilfracombe’s Runnymede Gardens now under a “Public Spaces Protection Order” where the Band Stand shelters a muddle of tramps and the hydrangeas are fenced off. Next came a handsome red brick building once home to “Devon Constabulary 1926” and now converted into some sort of living accommodation for people who hang their washing out of the windows and sit on the courtyard steps looking at their phones. Heading deeper into town, I lost count of the many derelict Grand Hotels I passed; like the Caracalla Baths I can only imagine the luxury they once contained. Some superb Victorian hotels have already been pulled down to be replaced with 20th century concrete embarrassments such as the shameful Admiral Collingwood where already the illuminated name has fallen apart to spell: The Admir L Colli Gwood.
Along Ilfracombe’s High Street a good number of ‘convenience stores’ spill their contents – a perplexing array of buckets and spades, racks of oilcloth and hosepipes – onto the pavements. Yet above the mess, the original buildings retain their stolid Victorian grandeur: wrought iron colonnades, second-storey verandas, Flemish gables and casement windows that would not disgrace Cadiz. Everything in pre-20th century Ilfracombe is designed along elegant classical principles of symmetry and scale. Alongside empty curry houses and boarded up pool halls are lines of stone urns, elaborate plaster work bosses and ranks of ionic, doric and Corinthian columns.
“Why oh why…” I wail to myself standing next to Verity (Damien’s Hirst’s surprisingly pleasing statue) waiting for the deep-sea fishing boat to come in, “…do we not cherish every last brick of this magnificent town? How can an advanced economy let such wonderful buildings fall apart?” This sentiment must also apply to myriad such places: Margate, Morcombe, Bogner, Ramsgate and poor old Southport.
“Because…” explains my husband as he staggers up the stone steps from the boat (you know how men hate it when women immediately present them with a problem as soon as they’ve returned from a manly trip), “…We’ve got better things to do. Like global trade and, I dunno, work. Also, we slightly can’t be arsed.”
I want to shove him back in the Bristol Channel. The neglect of English seaside resorts is too heartbreaking to brush aside in hopes of a quiet feed of fish and chips.
How have we found ourselves in the sorry state where Angela Rayner vows to build 370,000 houses a year, yet in places such as Ilfracombe there are abandoned Grand Hotels and vast stretches of handsome terraces – eight storeys high in places – that have been left to the ravages of the brisk South Westerly wind?
It wasn’t always like this. Ilfracombe was once cherished as a jewel of the English holiday scene. Thomas de Quincey visited Ilfracombe’s hot baths in 1812 to “restore his shattered strength” after the death of Wordworth’s daughter. G.H. Lewes, George Eliot’s squeeze described Ilfracombe thus in 1856:
A more charming spot England could hardly furnish… the charms of the place are manifold… the country all around is billowy with hills… If you climb one of those hills the chances are that you come across a rugged precipice sheer over the sea.
In 1874 the railway came to the town and by 1906 over 160,000 visitors disembarked at Ilfracombe on paddlesteamers from South Wales and Bristol. During the 1930s as many as 50 mainline express trains visited the town on summer Saturdays.
The arrival of the continental package holiday is the usual explanation given for the decline of British seaside towns and of course that’s part of it, but it didn’t help that paddle steamers stopped calling in the late 1960s and the trainline was closed in 1970. Without basic transport provision, of course people would stop visiting. Much like the drying up of Rome’s aqueducts in the sixth century, without basic infrastructure, towns inevitably function suboptimally.
Edmund Gibbon famously blamed the many sects of Christianity for the decline of the Roman Empire and while Britain’s few remaining Christians cannot take the flak for the neglect of its seaside town, we can hold responsible the general shift in our value system. As Angela Rayner demonstrated recently by dropping the requirement for “beauty” within building plans, the expectations that buildings augment the visual landscape has long gone, replaced instead by ideals of ‘sustainability’ and ‘affordability’. The execrable Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe shows how far our ideals have sunk.
What to do? What to do? I try to sunbathe on the misnamed Broadsands Beach but instead pick up my copy of Edmund Gibbon and panic anew. Theodoric had a stab at rebuilding some of Rome’s decaying infrastructure but it wasn’t until the Renaissance that folk realised some of the splendid buildings were worth repairing, rebuilding and ultimately copying. It became obvious that stonework designed along classical principles is what humans like. (Angela Rayner is wrong – beauty is not subjective.)
And then it hits me, I realise that in Ilfracombe the Renaissance is already beginning. Tunnels beaches, chiselled out by Welsh miners in the 1830s, is now a privately owned beach and wedding venue and mighty fine it is too. The Bath House, built in 1836 as a replica of the Athenian Treasury in Delphi is lovingly cared for and looks pristine. The Lime Kiln, a watersports venue and restaurant recently won a “Leisure and Tourist Project of the Year” and there are even rumours that a ferry service from South Wales to Ilfracombe might be revived. While the Victorian Society lists one of Ilfracombe’s houses as one of England’s most at risk buildings, some of the derelict hotels are being restored and turned into apartments.
So how about we as a country decide to skip the Dark Ages. Let’s jump straight to the Renaissance and recognise the architectural brilliance of the Georgians, Victorians and Edwardians and make it a national priority to preserve, restore and live in England’s magnificent seaside towns. If Angela Rayner is not going to help us, let there be some philanthropic property development group who wishes to restore England’s seaside grandeur. How about: The Old English Bath House Ltd. Let’s recreate the Thomas de Quincey experience of enjoying hot baths before cold plunges into the sea. Let’s have saunas and diving platforms along the England’s chilly coastline and revivified Victorian hotels to offer “elegant times” as promised on a 1911 postcard. Let’s take pride in the detailed brilliance of these town buildings that are already here beneath 20th century tat.
And before anyone moans about gentrification – yes, good. Everywhere in Britain should be gentrified and civilised and pleasant and elegant.
I can sunbathe now and imagine returning to Ilfracombe in 20 years’ time when all the fine buildings have been restored, where I can enjoy an Old English Bath House Experience before taking the paddle steamer to watch the porpoises at sunset. Until then I’ve already rebooked for next year, as the boys haven’t yet caught a tope.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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