London by the Sea: Resort Development on the South Coast of England 1880-1939

Abstract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the roles and characteristics of English seaside resorts changed considerably. In the early nineteenth century, resorts were the playgrounds of wealthy land-owners, businessmen and professionals in whose social integration they played an important part. As industrialization continued to raise the standard of living and disposable income of ever more sectors of society, so the role of the resorts changed in response to the widening range of expectations and higher levels of expenditure. This resulted in the development of a hierarchy of resorts frequented by definable sectors of the public and the division of the seaside year into seasons dominated by particular social groups. In response to the greater demand for resorts, more were created. By the 1880s, seaside resorts had reached the peak of their popularity with holiday-makers and many were also developing as important residential towns, particularly along the south coast. From the 1880s, the expectations of residents who wished to preserve the social tone and image of these towns increasingly diverged from the aims of those whose livelihood depended upon providing tourist attractions and such differences are still evident today.' The response by resorts along the Sussex coast to changes in the clientele's expectations reflected both general trends and this coastline's unique relationship with the wealthiest service and industrial urban economy in Britain - that of London. From the 1880s, London's continued prosperity and the related development of a large service sector resulted in a growth in demand by both holidaymakers and residents on the increasingly accessible Sussex coastline,

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 12 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.