Beside the Seaside. The Archaeology of the Twentieth-Century English Seaside Holiday Experience: A Phenomenological Context

Abstract

A recent survey commissioned by English Heritage highlights the rich cultural history of the traditional English seaside resort (Brodie and Winter 2007). Emerging in the eighteenth century, these towns grew in significance before the advent of cheaper continental holidays in the 1960s signalled their demise. Nevertheless they retain an affectionate place within English social memory, and are in their own right distinctive maritime communities. Using an archaeological case study and a broadly phenomenological approach this contribution analyzes the experience of the resort holiday through reference to place, space, and materiality. Further, it seeks to situate the English seaside resort, as a functionally distinctive post-medieval urban and maritime phenomenon, within a global context of the archaeology of tourism.