Seaside resorts: seasons, decades and geological time

We have all visited seaside resorts and some of us are fortunate enough to have been brought up in one: I lived in Paignton in South Devon and went to school in Torquay more than 50 years ago, so knew both towns well. I expect that they are rather different now to the way that I remember them, while both resorts have an interesting history. 

In his foreword to John Pike’s Iron Horse to the Sea, Crispin Gill writes [1]: 

The turnpike roads to Exmouth and Torquay first created the resorts of South Devon, but it was the coming of the railway.. ..that really saw these places grow. In the early days it was the aristocracy and the upper middle class who could afford holidays when these resorts were frequented mainly in the winter. Since the First World War, with the growth of holidays with pay, these resorts have become accessible to all and are now among the most popular in Britain. 

Initially, the railway terminated at Torquay (at what is now Torre) and Pike [1] describes the onward extension (including quotes from private papers supporting the proposal to build the railway): 

The route of the proposed railway was 11 miles in length and approached quite near to Brixham which was then becoming an important fishing port. Equally of interest is the prophecy of a future for Paignton ‘in climate of equal salubrity with Torquay, it possesses, in addition, a hard sandy beach nearly two miles in length, admirably adapted for bathing. Being in the centre of the Bay, it also embraces, within easy drives, all points of beauty … [it] annually draws to it numerous visitors for health as well as recreation.’ 

In Bradshaw’s Descriptive Railway Handbook [2], originally published in 1863 shortly after the extension had been completed, we have a fulsome account of the pleasures of Torquay, while Paignton is described thus: 

The situation of this place is really beautiful, commanding a central aspect of Torbay. Its picturesque church and the sand rounding from it to the fine woods of Tor Abbey, and the town and pier below it, form a pleasing coup d’œil. 

No mention of the swampy land between the railway and the sea and, by the relative size of the two entries, readers of Bradshaw’s will gain the impression that Paignton was regarded as a poor neighbour of Torquay, although there were wealthy residents. This may well have been the attitude of many outsiders, and some Paignton residents would not disagree with that perception, despite our pride in the town. 

The importance of winter visitors has been emphasised by StJohn Thomas and Smith [3]: 

As late as the 1890s, when following the abandonment of Brunel’s broad gauge, the first through trains ran from the North to Torbay, the resorts were still busier in winter than in summer, when many of their facilities closed down. Sea bathing (of course dependent on the bathing machine) was however growing rapidly in popularity and certainly local traffic was heavier in summer; Exeter in particular has a strong tradition of sending its people to the sea on day trips.. ..and by 1914 the upper middle class family by the sea was more usually a summer affair. 

By my time, in the 1950s, Paignton was a popular family resort and any wealthy visitors coming down in winter for their health were not apparent to us residents. In the opening of Walking with Gosse, I describe what I remembered [4]: 

After the summer holiday season, Paignton in the 1950s was typical of many seaside towns in the UK, being quiet and left to its residents. A small theatre put on rather good amateur pantomimes at Christmas and, at other times, hosted school music festivals, elocution contests, and the occasional Billy Graham-style Christian “Crusade”. Bakers, butchers, grocers, newsagents, chemists, banks and other high street shops supported the local community; while pubs, churches and clubs, associated with organisations like the British Legion, provided social life. In almost all homes, meals were prepared from basic ingredients and, as a treat, fish and chip shops dotted through the town were a source of takeaway meals: the fish being cod, plaice, haddock, bream or rock salmon (dogfish), all caught locally. 

Nothing much seemed to change in the pattern of life during the week, with Saturdays a time for relaxation and, perhaps, watching, or playing, sport. Sundays were for dressing in one’s “best” clothes, with very few shops, or places of entertainment, open. It was a day for gentle walks, going to church or Sunday School, and having a roast lunch (called dinner), followed by tea with tinned fruit and fancy cakes. If the routine of the week was broken by illness, support came from General Practitioners and a small hospital; while several dentists looked after teeth and dentures (that were much commoner then than now). 

That is one person’s view of winter in a summer-resort where all the shops selling rock, “kiss-me-quick hats”, saucy postcards, etc.. were boarded up, as were the stalls selling candyfloss, seafood, chips and the like. Some cafes remained open, but winter provided a bleaker outlook that was such a contrast to the summer, when train after train brought holidaymakers on Saturdays (changeover day), with similar numbers of trains taking them home after a week. I have tried to capture Paignton in winter in photographs (see below), as, to quote a 1918 advertisement, “one picture is worth a thousand words”.

 

Clearly, I have little skill as a photographer, but Rob Ball is highly skilled and also has the eye of an artist. He produced a wonderful photograph in his recent collection entitled Silent Coast [5] that was referenced by the Financial Times Magazine of 4th June 2022 (see below – the associated text is worth reading).

 

This image is not from Paignton, of course, but Rob’s photograph conjures up the ghostly feeling that seaside resorts can create out of season. There is no-one to be seen, yet everything that provides entertainment is still there, but locked up. In looking at the image, one remembers the noise of excited children running around in bathing costumes, the warmth of the balmy air, the thrill of slides (especially water slides), etc.. 

There are not only changes in types of visitors and their means of getting to the resorts of Torbay at different times of the year as there are also changes in topography. For example, the magnificent view of the coast from Babbacombe has been altered by the cliff fall at Oddicombe (see images below), where saturated sandstones fractured at weak points and then slid down. A different form of erosion comes in the effect of tides and waves that attack coastal defences and have severed some coastal paths that linked adjacent coves. Storms and tidal surges have also affected the railway lines that run to Torquay and Paignton through Dawlish, where landslips and breaches are familiar to both contemporary residents and those that are interests in transport history. These are decadal, rather than seasonal, changes, but what of Paignton in earlier times?

 

Before it became a resort, the town was renowned for its production of vegetables and it was a centre for cider making. There were also “Paignton cockles” and other shellfish, and fish, to collect and that reminds us of the other, non-human, residents of the shores of Torbay, well-known to those residents and holidaymakers that enjoy rock pooling and similar activities. There are many types of seaweeds, snails and barnacles and these show different levels of tolerance to drying, with some found higher up the shore than others and some never uncovered by the sea, even at low spring tides that occur every two weeks or so. Of course, tides are familiar to holidaymakers, as the sea creeps up the beach as the tide comes in twice each day, reducing the available space on the sand and creating a Canute-style adventure for children who have defences around their sand castles. Very few visitors and residents think of the effect of tides on other shore life. 

The presence of the beach for sunbathing and swimming is something we take for granted and, apart from the various erosional events, is little changed within our lifetime. However, if we go back tens of thousands of years to the time of the last Ice Age, the coast was way to the east of where it is now and Torbay was part of a lowland forest. We would recognise some features, like headlands and hilly peaks, but we would certainly not recognise the coast as it was then; increase in sea level at the time of the melting of the northern ice cap giving us the outline of the shore that we have today. If we look into the future, it seems certain that sea level rise resulting from global warming will cause local inundations and, without increased sea defences, the coastline will be inland of its current position. I wonder what it will be like and what kinds of visitors it will attract? 

 

[1] John Pike (1987) Iron Horse to the Sea: Railways in South Devon. Bradford on Aven. Ex-Libris Press. 

[2] Anon (1863) Bradshaw’s Descriptive Railway Hand-book of Great Britain and Ireland. London, W.J.Adams. 

[3] David StJohn Thomas and Simon Rocksborough Smith (1973) Summer Saturdays in the West. Newton Abbot, David & Charles. 

[4] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. e-book. 

[5] https://www.robball.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

Land and Sea

Visitors to Torbay, where I lived in the 1950s and 1960s, crowded to the beaches when the tide was out, but had to retreat further and further up the sands as the tide was coming in. Then, many left the beach area to go in search of ice cream, sea food, chips and dougnuts - and to play in the amusement arcades.

As a child, I realised that the tidal cycle varied from day to day and also through each month. It was only later that I uderstood that this was the effect of the gravitational pull of the sun and moon on the World’s oceans and that tides were the result of “bulges” and “troughs” in these huge masses of water, reaching their highest when the sun and moon were in alignment in what are termed spring tides. Waves would crash against the shore when the wind was blowing a gale from the east during spring tides and I loved going to the seafront during these storms to watch the cascades of spray – such a contrast to lying on the sand on a warm summer day. After these storms, there would be sand, stones, shells and all manner of flotsam washed on to the promenade behind the sea wall that marked the limit of the blue on a map...

Occasionally, there have been catastrophic breaches in sea defences, as occurred along the coast with the dramatic collapse of the village of Hallsands in Start Bay at the beginning of the Twentieth Century (see above). It was a fishing village, with a sea wall, and was also protected by underwater shingle banks offshore. These shingles were considered very suitable for building purposes and they were dredged, resulting in Hallsands losing a key defence against the effect of storms. The remains of the village provide sombre evidence of the power of the sea as an erosive force and, as a child, I found that looking down on the remains adjacent to the cliff brought a sense of fear and awe. This dramatic location was used in Michael Winner’s film The System [1] for a scene where the characters played by Oliver Reed and Jane Merrow had a romantic liaison – the forbidding atmosphere of the place providing a metaphor for what was to happen in their future relationship.

More recently, there has been serious erosion to the north of Torbay, with the breakthrough of the sea wall at Dawlish and the subsequent undercutting of the main railway line to South Devon and Cornwall. Brunel is widely recognised as a brilliant engineer, but his vision was sometimes unchecked. Certainly, his building of a railway line between sandstone cliffs and the sea was a recipe for trouble and so it has proved on many occasions. The sandstone cliffs of Dawlish (I use the term sandstone to include breccias, where large mineral fragments are embedded in a sandy matrix) are pitted and sculpted by the action of winds and rain and this gives us a clue to another form of coastal erosion; that from landward. Any visitor to the “Jurassic Coast” in southern England is familiar with regular rock falls, as are those who walk under chalk cliffs. They also occur in sandstone areas. There is a good example of such a fall just to the north of Torbay, between Oddicombe and Petitor. This is how the great writer Philip Henry Gosse describes this part of the coast in the 1860s [2]:

Along the margin of a cliff, now steep and sheer, now breaking into an uneven but variously verdant slope, we begin our march, ever and anon pausing to gaze on the smiling scene below. The descent we are just leaving behind, half-covered with the gorse and guelder-rose, is Oddicombe, whose white crescent beach lies below, bounded by the limestone promontory of Petit Tor, which divides the huge precipices of red sandstone close at hand from the bluff coast of the same formation that stretches away to the northward; its ruddy cliffs and bold headlands – Watcombe, The Ness at the mouth of the Teign, the perforated rocks and needles near Dawlish – gradually fading into blue as the coast-line trends away to the eastward, and is lost to the aching gaze somewhere about the boundary of the county.

It is a lovely scene..

Gosse lived in St Marychurch, Torquay, and he made extensive collections of marine organisms between Oddicombe and Petitor, but the sandstone outcrop is different in profile to the one with which he was so familiar. Recent cliff falls have strewn the beach below with masses of rubble (see below), including the remains of houses built on the cliff top to give fine views. Sandstone is a porous rock and consists of mineral grains eroded from older rocks that have become cemented with new mineral deposits and then compressed. In some areas deep within the Earth’s crust, porous sandstone strata provide reservoirs containing oil that we extract after drilling: a similar feature to the aquifers contained within chalk, from which we extract water using boreholes. Needless to say, sandstone that becomes saturated with water, and that is fractured, produces slides like those seen repeatedly at Oddicombe. If you wish to know more of these events, the website of Ian West and Nikolett Csorvasi [3] has many excellent illustrations of the Oddicombe cliffs over time and is well worth browsing.

The original sand that formed the rock may come from deserts, or from sediments at the bottom of seas or lakes. This takes us to the idea of time scales. The coastline of Torbay, so obviously composed to the observer of bands of limestone, sandstone, slates and shales [3], would have looked very different just a few thousand years ago, although the underlying rocks were, of course, always present. Sea level is higher now that it was then and we know that coastal forests have been flooded [4]; remains becoming visible during contemporary low spring tides. If we could see pictures from that time, we would still recognise headlands, although these would be inland and have rather different profiles to the ones we see today. If we go further back in time everything is changed markedly, with the island of Great Britain joined to continental Europe. Before that, Great Britain was part of a huge land mass on a tectonic plate moving around the surface of the Earth, supported on the Earth's magma core.

The Oddicombe cliff falls are easy to recall as they continue and there have been major collapses in the last ten years. We know of the destruction of Hallsands village from contemporary records, and we know of the Torbay forests from the evidence of their remains, although some find it difficult to believe. Events that occurred a million, tens of millions, hundreds of millions and thousands of millions of years ago are quite beyond our understanding. We are sure they occurred, but we cannot comprehend geological time scales. We never will.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzYuUfC1adY

[2] Philip Henry Gosse (1865) Land and Sea. London, James Nisbet & Co.

[3] http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~imw/Torquay.htm

[4] http://rwotton.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-mammoth-tooth-from-submerged-forest.html