The Seaside, Health and the Environment in England and Wales Since 1800

by Hassan,John

• ISBN13: 9781840142655
• ISBN10: 1840142650
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The seaside has always held a special position in British history as a place of rest, relaxation and recuperation. Over the last 200 years many have made their way to the coast, attracted by the long sunshine hours, the clean ozone-charged air and the opportunities for bathing in and even drinking sea-water. Although the early health resort ideal began to give way to more pleasure orientated themes in the nineteenth century, the seaside holiday was still regarded by many as a wholesome and invigorating break from inland urban life well into the twentieth century. Yet with ever increasing numbers of visitors and rising levels of coastal pollution, this was by no means a forgone conclusion.The Seaside, Health and the Environment in England and Wales since 1800 explores the ways in which English seaside resorts continually reinvented themselves to take account of contemporary trends in popular leisure and maintain their hold on the public's imagination. Particular account is paid to the interwar years when new obsessions with outdoor activities such as sunbathing and tanning were purposefully adopted by the industry to define the modern image of the resort holiday.For these and other reasons the seaside holiday reached new peaks of popularity in the 1930s and 1950s, yet, this very success placed enormous pressures on the environmental amenities that people came to enjoy. As this work shows, environmental stresses were manifold, particularly pollution of the resorts' prime assets, their beaches. As such, serious questions are raised concerning why it took such a long time for a determined effort to be made to reverse beach pollution, and the lessons to be learned regarding the impact of negative images of the coast as a zone of danger and infection.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	viii
List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	x
General Editors Preface	xi
List of Abbreviations	xii
1 Introduction	1	(14)
2 Georgian Origins	15	(16)
3 The Victorian and Edwardian Periods	31	(44)
4 Escape to Sun and Light	75	(33)
5 Fun, Crowds and Problems in the Inter-war Period	108	(26)
6 Post-war Golden Years and Controversies, 1945-1976	134	(37)
7 The Coastal Anti-Pollution League, 1958-1987	171	(21)
8 Environmental Awakening: the 1970's and 1980's	192	(27)
9 Muscular Activism and Pressure Groups in the 1990's	219	(23)
10 Past and Future Challenges	242	(23)
References	265	(27)
Index	292