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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Calm yourself, Joanna.
There were once buildings with Italianate facades in Mogadishu, shops selling Westernised fashions in Kabul, elegant French culture in Beirut, and popular nightlife on the coasts of Gaza.
At Ramsgate, there are the architectural remnants of a garden that was donated by a titled lady to the town in 1923. The rusty art deco railings and the fish pond crudely filled in with concrete long ago are as alien to 2024 as are the Greek ruins on Sicily.
As Tolkien put it, so do all feel this way you do who live to see such times, but all one has to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given to you. There is something of privilege to be assigned the role of witness to the last days of greatness. Like accompanying a beloved elderly aunt in her final years of decline and then solemnly walking behind her coffin at her funeral.
Madeleine Bunting’s book, The Seaside, England’s Love Affair, is the ideal beach companion for your next holiday.
We have been going through another of those destructive periods like we had in the 1960s and 1970s. Politicians become embarassed by our past, their friends ar RIBA and among developers tell them and they are keen to hear that these buildings are out of date and cannot be economically maintained. Best to demolish and replace with a concrete and glass box, maybe mishaped to show edginess.
These same politicians and RIBA officers and developer directors love going to Tuscany or any other non-British place you might like to mention and whe nthere they enjoy the repaired old buildings and mutter about the pathetic nature of Britain that we can’t keep our country as well as they do.
The link to the Swansea Labour Party item in the article was interesting. However, the idea of using some of the power from the putative Swansea Lagoon tidal generation setup to make hydrogen as a fuel for a ship is, err, selective with the truth. They’d be better off feeding the whole output into the National Grid from an environmental perspective. Financially, it might make sense to manufacture hydrogen to sell on as a fuel, rather than having to flog the generation output at whatever price is available at high tide, though. Money and environmentalism are not necessarily good bed fellows.
Incidentally, that lagoon project, it’s mate around Cardiff, and the big daddy one, the Severn Barrage, do not attract much coverage in the “press” at present.
Years ago, I actually crossed the Bristol Channel from Mumbles Pier to Ilfracombe, on the old “Balmoral” – which has been restored quite recently. https://www.thebalmoral.org.uk/specification/ Travelled back to Swansea via a bus to Barnstaple then train via Exeter, Bristol, Cardiff.
An excellent article and very thought provoking.
Although seeing the words “Angela rayner” and “beauty” in the same sentence did rather jar.
This article reminds me of the letters written by a wealthy provincial official of the ancient Roman Empire, who was still hoping his son would have a glittering career in the Roman Senate, even as the barbarians were battering down the gates of Rome.
After all, why worry about Muslim Gangs brandishing machetes, disembowelling knives, battering poles and even samurai swords, rampaging through English towns and cities now, when their primary victims are only execrable peasants? You know the sort, don’t you, Joanna? The “vile & feckless” white working class, now being eagerly rounded up with Stalinist alacrity, while smirking Muslims look on with approval.
It is often better to inject humour into a tale of woe as it can often be more effective, and you did that here with your article. Where I live all of these old elegant buildings are “listed”. This must make councils feel good about themselves that they have protected from being knocked down. But in actual fact they are all boarded up and left to disintegrate and are a total eyesore.
It costs a lot of money to restore a listed building. The cost is amplified because VAT is charged on the work, while new builds are zero rated. VAT exemption was removed a few years back. Restoring it would incentivise restoration.
“where we have holidayed for the past seven years” – that’s a looooong holiday
Here in Exmouth, Devon we have a stunning coastline with a three mile beach when the tide is out. The seafront is covered in Victorian architecture as is the town. Recently some gentlemen bought one of the Victorian hotels in a Victorian crescent on the seafront, and rebranded it a best western. Not too long after these gentlemen, took ownership, the were awarded a contract to house illegal immigrants. These people became our new neighbours. Not a word of consultation with Devon county council, nor our town council, or the people who live here and pay property tax. This is when I knew it did not matter what we thought, the gov’t would do as they liked.