Wish I Was There: collective nostalgia and cultural memory in the English seaside resort by Ellen Peirson

here

Wis h

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Creating a sense of place from collective nostalgia and cultural memory in the English seaside resort of Folkestone

Ellen Peirson MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design University of Cambridge

W ish I W as There

Creating a sense of place from collective nostalgia and cultural memory in the English seaside resort of Folkestone

Ellen Peirson Jesus College Word Count: 14,981

With thanks to: Minna Sunika-Blank Ingrid Schroder Aram Mooradian Jim Pockson Lord Steve Bassam Martin Habell Paul Rennie Nick Ewbank ...and to all past residents and holidaymakers who gave their time to share their memories of Folkestone

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MPhil Examination in Architecture and Urban Design 2018 - 2020 This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

Preface This research project emerged from time spent working in Folkestone, when I became increasingly preoccupied by the nature of the ongoing regeneration effort. Memories of childhood visits to Folkestone, Margate, Ramsgate, and other Kent seaside towns, bring about feelings of chaos, but in the enchantingly whimsical way that childhood memories do. The flashing lights of the amusements, the constant tune of the fairground, all under the permanent threat of the heavens opening, constructed a cheap glamour in the way only the English seaside could. There are few discernible relics of this left. For the last decade, Folkestone has been in the midst of a supposed renaissance: huge private investment from one philanthropist has produced a burgeoning arts scene. The Folkestone Triennial has now produced the largest outdoor artwork collection in the UK and as the Guardian’s weekend magazine boldly declared ‘let’s move to… Folkestone’, residents continued to bemoan the growing presence of the ‘Down from Londoners’. Something about the ongoing developments felt more sinister. In 2017, the slogan ‘Folkestone is an Art School’ was plastered around the town by Bob & Roberta Smith. Of course, I wanted Folkestone to be considered an art school, but I also wanted it to be more. The artworks often commented on Folkestone’s position in the UK today. Sometimes they took the form of a quip: I never felt quite sure if Folkestone was in on the joke or not. These preoccupations grew into an ever-growing awareness of the tensions in Folkestone; between the land and the sea; between the faded tourism industry and the new arts economy; and between the town itself and London, as it creeped closer. The following work is an exploration of these preoccupations. They started in Folkestone – spread to the English seaside more generally – and eventually returned to Folkestone, to look to the future.

Contents Introduction

Chapter One: Nostalgia

Chapter Two: Peripheral

Chapter Three: Liminality

Chapter Four: Excess

Chapter Five: Flux

Conclusion

109

Discussion: Masterplan

115

Bibliography

123

List of Figures

133

Appendices

141

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Figure 1: Folkestone seafront, as seen from the Harbour Arm

11 In 1725, Daniel Defoe ‘passed by a miserable fishing town, called Folkston’ (Stock, 1848). By the late 18th century, the same miserable fishing town had became a wellness retreat for the aristocracy, as supposed health benefits of sea air for health emerged in the popular consciousness. When the railway reached Folkestone in 1843, the seaside holiday was popularised. The industrial revolution was creating polluted cities that residents needed to retreat from and providing a railway network by which to do it. Fashionable Folkestone was borne, and it prospered for decades as a ‘bucket and spade’ seaside resort (Easdown, 2018).

Folkestone, like most English seaside resorts, suffers from a complex and deep-seated set of social issues, caused by the loss of its core industry of tourism. Tourism created a low-paid and seasonal job market, which is now in peril (Beatty and Fothergill, 2004). Unemployment is high and educational attainment is low; with few prospects in Folkestone, young people often leave to find better opportunities elsewhere, leaving behind an ageing population that must be

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In the 1960s, Folkestone fell into a slow and steady decline. International holidays were more affordable and accessible than ever before; domestic tourism lost its relevance. Folkestone

survived for some time with an active ferry service to Boulogne, and a direct train line to the port; it was merely a stop on the way to the continent. In 1994, the Channel Tunnel opened, with the Folkestone terminal 5km from the town centre. This spelt the closure of the passenger ferry service, and subsequently the harbour fell into a desperate decline.

Figure 2: Map of the UK, highlighting Folkestone

Wish I Was There

INTRODUCTION

cared for by a struggling local authority (Vickers, Rees and Birkin, 2003, p. 49; Atterton, 2006, pp. 23–24). This thesis investigates perceptions of place in Folkestone, past and present, through the eyes of the growing retired population. It will connect these perceptions to the physical structures and cultural references that contribute to a sense of place that is both rooted in the locality and formed by larger external forces. This is understood through an image of the typical English seaside resort more generally which, this thesis will argue, creates an image of an England that once was and that many seek to return to. The English seaside resort is bound to this myth of Englishness, providing an escape from reality amongst the sand and waves. It may seem paradoxical to the reality of the English seaside resort – but on the contrary, the imaginary contributes to a very real narrative of the English seaside that continues to permeate its present and future.

Folkestone’s future is often discussed in the context of its past. Therefore, this design-led research asks that we not only consider experience in the formation of a masterplan, but that we also give equal weight to the value of past experiences, in particularly, in contexts such as Folkestone, somewhere that this thesis will argue bases its sense of place and identity firmly in its past. Dyckhoff (2015) described it as ‘the new, and, indeed, the old Folkestone’ and many of the recently refurbished buildings and spaces seem to subscribe to this nostalgic image of its past. While such places are a formative part of Folkestone’s identity, they also act as a constant reminder of what has been lost (Davis, 1982). This thesis draws on collective and individual memories of Folkestone to understand how this has formed a national nostalgia for the English seaside resort; how seaside regeneration is effected by this misty-eyed and whimsical view of the coastline and, ultimately, how this affects a sense of place and indeed placelessness that impacts regeneration attempts in Folkestone.

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This research has been carried out through in-depth interviews with those who either lived in or visited Folkestone during its ‘golden age’ as an English seaside resort. The aim is to create an alternative masterplan for Folkestone that caters to the ageing population, as the incidents of dementia increase in the town. While the resultant masterplan will inevitably take into account key

considerations in relation to the design of dementia-friendly spaces, this research focuses on the significance of Folkestone in the imaginations of this population, how this forms the sense of place in Folkestone, and eventually, what of this should be preserved.

Chapter One

Nostalgia

A point of departure

NOSTALGIA

Methodology of the local and the global – are the defining theories in this understanding of the seaside. Interviews were conducted using an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach (Smith and Osborn, 2008; Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2009). Participants are interviewed in order to understand how they make ‘sense of their personal and social world’, and to identify the ‘meanings particular experiences, events [and] states hold for participants’ (Smith and Osborn, 2008, p. 53). As a phenomenological method, it is

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Figure 3: Sunny Sands Beach as seen from The Stade

The core of this work is understood through collected oral histories via semi-structured interviews, to gain an understanding of the collective memories and nostalgia that shape the contemporary English seaside resort. These are examined against key popular culture references and cultural artefacts of the seaside, of which there are many, and academic writings, of which there are much fewer. The key themes of this work are framed by theories of place and its inextricable relationship with time. The work of Doreen Massey – her theories on the production of space, the impact of interrelations and her notions

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concerned with direct experience, and is used here to understand interviewees’ experiences and attachment to the seaside, specifically Folkestone. The IPA method lends itself to a small, homogeneous and notably not randomised sample (2008, p. 56). This method is closely associated to an ethnographic study of a particular culture. By investigating a specific community in detail, the ethnographer can provide a detailed report of that community. These findings alone cannot be extrapolated to other communities but, when combined with other detailed ethnographic studies, valuable comparisons can be made. This work will not seek to make empirical claims on the English seaside as a whole, but rather theorise on the implications that a broader cultural vision of the English seaside has had on the specific context of Folkestone. This method was previously used by Jarratt (2015) as a way of understanding the sense of place in Morecambe, defined by Jarratt as ‘seasideness’. While Jarratt’s hypothesis was that the sea is the main attraction of the seaside, this thesis argues that it is also embedded in a wider nostalgia for the English seaside and a vision of itself that exists in the cultural imaginary. To obtain the sample, physical fliers (see appendix A) were placed in local business in both Folkestone and Canterbury, and notices were put on local Facebook pages. Candidates were targeted that had two, sometimes overlapping, experiences: having spent summer holidays on the Kent coast as a

child or having grown up there. Interview candidates were accepted on the basis of their primary experience of the seaside either being in Folkestone, or between Folkestone and another Kentish resort. The fliers received 18 responses and eight of these were chosen to interview (see demographic table). No incentive was offered in return for the interview; candidates’ eagerness to be interviewed on the subject therefore offers some insight into their affection for the seaside. IPA interviews are typically open-ended and unrestricted (Smith and Osborn, 2008, pp. 58–59). Interviewees were asked where they would feel most comfortable being interviewed and this was always in their own home or in a local café. They were conducted in a friendly and informal manner, the aim being to inspire a stream of consciousness. On average, interviews lasted for approximately an hour (the shortest being 40 minutes and the longest an hour and 45 minutes). The semi-structured interview technique allowed the interview candidate to elaborate into particularly novel areas to which the investigator may not have expected or predicted. The respondent is considered the ‘experiential expert’ and is therefore given space to ‘tell their own story’ (2008, p. 59). Interviews were subsequently transcribed verbatim and then analysed to draw out themes. Broadly speaking, these can be categorised into peripheries, liminality, excess and flux. These form the four subsequent chapters of this thesis.

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Of course, there are limitations to this method. IPA seeks to identify homogenous samples (Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2009). Ideally, a sample for each criterion (visited as a child and grew up at the seaside) would purely consist of candidates that solely fit one of these criteria. However, the method produces an unavoidable dualism. Many of those interviewed now live at the coast and therefore childhood memories become entwined with more recent memories, or opinions on current developments within the given town can affect their perception of it now. However, this unreliability and questionable nature is part of what forms the basis of this research: the notion of cultural memory, false memory and the imaginary. Understanding this rose-tinted, but hazy view through which we see the seaside is key to understanding its regeneration.

Of the Larger English seaside resorts that Humby (2013) defines, 15 were chosen to visit. Of these, eight were still classified as ‘coastal resorts’ by Vickers, Rees and Birkin (Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Hastings, Blackpool, Torquay, Paignton, Eastbourne and Southend-on-Sea). These were chosen as case studies to understand the nature of the tourism landscape in the places that can still be considered as successful resorts. A further two were defined as ‘aged coastal extremities’, the same as Folkestone, to offer insight into areas with the same demographic (Scarborough and Great Yarmouth).1 A further two were visited that are no

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1. Of these areas, few used to be successful resorts, which is why only two were suitable to visit

The focus of the IPA method on perception of experience could limit our understanding of why such experiences occurred in the first instance. However, as Smith and Osborn (2008) argued, IPA is interpreted through a wider idiographic and contextual analysis, and participants experiences are never viewed in isolation from the key texts and cultural domain of the subject. As this study seeks to understand the unique sense of place in Folkestone and the nostalgic condition that this adheres to, the results of the IPA study will be read in conjunction with key texts by Doreen Massey, as well as other key human geographers and academics who have studied English seaside resorts.

This research was complemented by an extensive fieldwork period based in Folkestone, with additional visits to other resorts that are key to the collective image of the English seaside. Each case study was at one point or another considered a successful seaside resort. These were chosen using Vickers, Rees and Birkin’s (2003) Classification of UK Local Authorities using 2001 Census Key Statistics and Humby’s (2013) Profile of Deprivation in Larger English Seaside Destinations. The local authority of Folkestone and Hythe (formally Shepway), is classified as an aged coastal extremity. These areas are characterised by an aged population, many of whom live alone, and a lack of urban areas of any great size. This category is differentiated from an aged coastal resort as these districts are no longer considered holiday destinations or resorts.

CHAPTER ONE

longer defined as ‘Coastal Britain’; Brighton, which is now considered as a ‘young multicultural’ area; and Weston-super-Mare, which is classified as a ‘rural fringe’ area. Extensive photo essays were conducted in each town to understand the nature of the tourism industry and the infrastructure that supports it. Short videos were also produced, using the same format in each town, in an attempt to unveil the detail of the character of the place. Although the case study visits are not discussed explicitly in the work, they were central to initial understandings of place and placelessness in seaside towns. This thesis explores these issues through a tourist’s typical trip to an English seaside resort, as retold through oral histories of Folkestone. Chapter One is the point of departure for the tourist, an exploration of relevant academic texts and broader themes of nostalgia in English culture and its implications. Chapter Two looks at the tourist’s journey to the seaside, considering notions of travel to the seaside and its

Age

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A B C D E F G H

65-69 55-59 60-64 65-69 60-64 65-69 60-64 70-74

peripheral nature. In Chapter Three, the tourist arrives at the beach, where the seaside’s edge condition and liminal nature is explored. Chapter Four is concerned with tourists’ tendency to indulge in excess at the seaside and the consequences. Chapter Five explores the resort left behind after the holiday and other such foundational theories on the peril that places built on tourism can present. It will then consider what happens to these places when the holiday is over and only memories remain. As dementia hotspots emerge at the coast, in the places least equipped to care for their vulnerable populations, this thesis considers a new typology for dementia care, in the now underused typology of the ‘grand hotel’. This is considered within a wider masterplan for the Folkestone Harbour area and responds to the themes drawn out in the interview process. This hypothetical design project has both steered the thesis direction and ensured that the research has a practical and spatial application.

Gender Grew up in Folkestone Visited Folkestone as a child Lives in Folkestone now

— M F M M M F M F

—

Figure 4: Demographics table of interview participants

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Why Folkestone? Folkestone Harbour (Osborne, 2004). De Haan bought vacant properties on Folkestone’s Old High Street and Tontine Street, a previously dilapidated part of the town, on the edge of the harbour, and began to offer them to creatives at discounted rents. This area has since been rebranded as the Creative Quarter, which Creative Folkestone describes as ‘a unique attraction for visitors’ (Creative Folkestone, 2020). De Haan also submitted multiple masterplans for the area, produced by Foster & Partners, Farrells and most recently, ACME. This is in the process of being implemented and has seen the

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Figure 5: Richard Woods’ artwork Holiday Home for the 2017 Folkestone Triennial floating in the Folkestone Harbour

Folkestone is used as a case study for this work due to the growing tensions between long-time residents and the burgeoning artistic scene (Batty, 2016). In the 2017 Folkestone Triennial, titled ‘Double Edge’, artists interrogated Folkestone as a place of division: of borders, wealth, coasts and most pertinently – between the existing and new community. It was the culmination of over a decade of private investment in the arts and culture in Folkestone, initiated when Roger De Haan, owner of Folkestone’s biggest employer, Saga, sold the company to form a charitable trust and buy the entirety of

CHAPTER ONE

Harbour Arm brought back into active use as a food, drink and entertainment venue, the former Harbour Station preserved as a public garden and a larger beach and boardwalk created in the place of the former Rotunda amusements park. The next stage of the development will see 81,000sqm of residential space (1000 homes) and 11,000sqm of commercial space built on the Harbour Arm car park and adjacent reclaimed beach (ACME, 2020). They will also reopen the Leas Lift, a funicular railway which has been closed twice due to funding and maintenance issues, in 2010 and 2017.

Wish I Was There

These recent regeneration attempts seek to reinvigorate the tourism industry by investing in the arts. The Folkestone Triennial was introduced in 2008 as high-profile artists were commissioned to produce artworks for the town during the three-month event. Folkestone now has a permanent collection of 84 public artworks, creating a ‘gallery without walls’ to attract further visitors to the town. The De Haan Charitable Trust has also invested in the community and education sectors, having built

and funded a new school, Folkestone Academy; a sports facility, the Three Hills Sports Park; a five-storey skate park; new public playground and recreation areas; the Quarterhouse, an arts and entertainment venue; and the Sidney De Haan Research Centre, which researches the role of arts activities in health conditions associated with ageing. As instances of dementia proliferate in seaside resorts, particularly in the ‘aged coastal extremities’, themes of memory and nostalgia in regeneration efforts are bound into the nature of what it is to remember – what it is to forget – and how we are to still function despite such emergent dementia hotspots (Vickers, Rees and Birkin, 2003; Alzheimer’s Research UK, 2015). Therefore, this thesis is as much concerned with the loss of memory as it is the memories itself. The resultant masterplan will seek to still provide the 1000 homes that ACME has set out in its masterplan, while still offering something towards a solution to the emergent dementia hotspots in the places least equipped to cope.

NOSTALGIA

Understanding Place and Memory This work deals with two key theories: the preservation of a sense of place and English ideals of nostalgia. It will seek to uncover how the myth of Englishness has sought to reinforce ideas of space and place, but in doing so, has underpinned feelings of difference, exclusion and ultimately more dangerous atmospheres of nationalism.

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Figure 6: View across the enclosed section of Folkestone Harbour

Relph (1976) first identified three key dimensions to place: the physical environment, the meaning (associations, memories, connotations, denotations) and activities supported by a space. Using Relph’s theories of place, we can

begin to understand superficially what might constitute a sense of place at the seaside. The physical environment of the seaside is striking and distinctive. The seaside’s meaning, as a place for leisure and tourism is also unique, in a region widely regarded as the birth of mass tourism (Walton, 2004). Finally, the activities afforded by the seaside are on the whole exclusive to the region – most notably that of the beach. Therefore, memories and associations with one seaside town can be transplanted into another, resulting in a regional meaning of the English coast (Relph, 1976).

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Relph’s theories on place were foundational (Seamon and Sowers, 2008). While his work began with the concern of place and its relationship with space, the primary significance was in his notion of placelessness, which he defined as ‘the casual eradication of distinctive places and the making of standardized landscapes that results from an insensitivity to the significance of place’ (Relph, 1976, chap. Preface). His work can seem unwieldy and highly philosophical at times, but it is rooted in a desire to make and maintain places (before such processes became known as ‘placemaking’). Relph wrote at the same time as Yi-Fu Tuan, during a time when many human geographers were seemingly dissatisfied with the lack of experiential definitions of space and place. Tuan (1977) saw the division between space and place as the extent to which meaning has been applied. Space is the abstract, to which there are no social connections for the human. Place is created by and through human experiences, through which we create meaning. Tuan identifies two ways in which these can be created; through direct, intimate experiences, such as the senses; or through indirect concepts and symbols, notably arts, monuments and architecture (1977, p. 6). Tuan understood place as being the ordering of space in order to derive meaning, stemming from an innate human desire to organise the world’s geography. He said: ‘space is freedom, place is security’ (1977, p. 3).

While fundamentally this work is concerned with place, theories of placelessness and the non-place are just as significant. Where the place is unique, rich in meaning and shaped by associated histories and experiences; the non-place is deprived of these associations, places that are so homogenous they become indistinguishable from the next (Auge, 1995). This becomes relevant at the seaside as developments continue to impose an understated, standardised and ultimately commodifiable version of the seaside onto towns in the midst of regeneration. There is still an overt sense of place at the seaside. But the commodification of such meaning, rooted in globalisation, creates inauthentic landscapes, devoid of meaning (Arefi, 1999, p. 183). The notion of the non-place is traditionally explored as an effect of the rejection of the past; the process of globalisation requires that the local is diminished, as ‘things are speeding up and spreading out’ (Massey, 1994, p. 146). This work explores how feelings of placelessness can be just as evident even with an apparent total embrace of the past and its associated motifs. Massey presents two conflicting arguments for the value of place and the way in which it is ‘endlessly mobilised in political argument’ (2005, p. 5). In some senses, it is a retreat from the endless cycle of globalisation and comes from a fear of globalisation’s power. Thus, a return to the everyday and its practices is required; ‘the defence of place by working-class communities

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in the teeth of globalisation’ (2005, p. 6). In contrast, place can be concerned with ‘nationalisms and territorial parochialisms characterised by claims to local specificity and by a hostility to at least some designated others’ (2005, p. 6). Through this lens, the strive for ‘the local’ and specificity in place can be viewed as a rejection of differences and stemming from an ‘attempted withdrawal from invasion/difference’ and upholding feelings of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (2005, p. 6). In identifying this conflict, Massey asks readers to abandon previous concepts of space and place, as laid out by Relph (1976) and Tuan (1977) and to refuse the distinction ‘between place (as meaningful, lived and everyday) and space (as what? the outside? the abstract? the meaningless?)’ (Massey, 2005, p. 6). Massey asserts that this notion is too simplistic and deprives theories of space of a ‘spatial imagination’ (2005, p. 8). Instead of imagining ‘space as a surface on which we are placed’, we can think of it as ‘the product of interrelations: as constituted through interactions, from the immensity of the global to the intimately tiny’ (2005, pp. 7–9).

Massey redefines place as ‘spatiotemporal events’, being an integration of time and space (2005, p. 130). If space is the existence of simultaneous and chronological narratives, then place is the collection of these stories and the way they are articulated within their wider settings. The ‘product of these intersections within that wider setting, and of what is made of them’ is what forms the character of a place (2005, p. 130). In contemporary terms, Massey’s work on the relationship between globalisation and place is critical in understanding the widespread populism that has fuelled key political events, such as Brexit. Massey describes a ‘double imaginary’ between the freedom with which we can now cross space (road, air, screens) and the increasing ‘right to one’s own place’. This only ‘works in

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In abandoning the notion of space and place being opposing, Massey develops the theory that space need not be so static, dispelling the ‘imagination of space as already divided-up, of places which are already separated and bounded’ (2005, p. 65). This approach becomes most relevant to this work when approached from the

notion of travelling, and subsequently returning somewhere. By travelling, you alter space, as you ‘are part of the constant process of the making and breaking of links which is an element in the constitution of you yourself’ (2005, p. 118). Subsequently, you can never quite return to a place, for it will have moved on. ‘To open up “space” to this kind of imagination means thinking time and space as mutually imbricated and thinking both of them as the product of interrelations. You can’t go back in space-time. To think that you can is to deprive others of their ongoing independent stories… You can’t hold places still’ (2005, p. 124).

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favour of the already powerful’, who can move freely, while still protecting their own homes (2005, p. 86). In Massey’s considerations of the link between space and time, she explores nostalgia and the longing for ‘home’. Massey views this as a penalty of the modern project and its accelerated pace of change. When we see time and space as overlapping, entangled and a product of interrelations, the desire to ‘go home’, is to deny the ‘home’ of its own trajectory and its own need to change and adapt in a globalising world. As Massey (2005, p. 124) says: ‘places change; they go on without you…a nostalgia which denies that is certainly in need of reworking’. While Massey considers this in the context of the childhood home, this work considers the seaside resort as the place which many seek to ‘go back’ to. Popular culture has continually reinforced images of the English seaside resort in the cultural imaginary. In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams (1973) analyses the contribution of ‘certain images and associations’ to a collective image of the English countryside, one that denies its complexity and multiplicity (1973, pp. 1–2). Williams describes the national near obsession with idealising a ‘golden age’ in rural England and how this can come to be ‘a myth functioning as a memory’ – in his context as a yearning for rural England (1973, p. 43). Williams viewed his childhood as not only a collection of personal memories, but also bound to the collective memory of events before his time (1960). This

notion of the English myth has not only disguised real class conflict, hostility and animosity that existed through this ‘golden age’, but also holds up an image of imperial England as faultless. *** Nostalgia comes from the Greek words: nostos, meaning ‘to return home’ and algos, meaning ‘pain’. The pain refers to a dissatisfaction with the present, and subsequently a will to return home to happier times (Fuentenebro de Diego, 2014). At the core of this research is the need to question what we see of the past and how it creates a lens through which we view potential futures. England’s enduring nostalgia for the post-war years is not unique to the seaside. At its most innocent, nostalgia is the ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ slogan, popularised in 1939 to encourage the public to maintain the ubiquitous stiff upper lip that is entrenched in English culture. Though created to calm a nation under threat from aerial bombing, it has now become synonymous with stoicism in the face of slighter events. The recent proliferation of this slogan in itself is not sinister, but is part of a wider cultural shift, one that Hatherley (2016) has dubbed ‘austerity nostalgia’. Austerity nostalgia is the reason that the designated slums of Victorian terraces across Britain became desirable after the discovery of ‘heritage’ – presuming that the widespread deprivation and

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industrialisation of the city that formed them was forgotten (Samuel, 1996). Subsequently, and in the same ilk, it’s the coveted ex-council flat offering the owner a stripped back, authentic experience. The socialist modern project here is a victim of popular taste and at direct odds to the original values. Perhaps at its most dangerous, austerity nostalgia is the use of the ‘Austerity Britain’ of 1945 to propel the rhetoric of austerity in the present day. Austerity of 1945 was followed by the formation of a welfare state, a robust national health service and an extensive house building programme (Hatherley, 2016). This form of austerity took from the top of society so it could give to the bottom and equalise the nation. Present day austerity seeks to dismantle these services, while under the same banner of keeping calm and carrying on. Of course, nostalgia can comfort and remind that, although wound up in a dissatisfaction with the present, a better future is possible. However, it must be remembered that this can be also read as a nationalism and a rejection of the human progress that means that we do not need to keep calm and carry on anymore. Keep Calm and Carry On is a thinly veiled Make Britain Great Again.

Nostalgia may be self-contradictory by nature, but it’s too easy to dismiss as unhelpful and pessimistic: it has been shown to improve social connectedness and provide a sense of meaning. Threats to life’s meaning can in turn increases feelings of nostalgia (Routledge et al., 2011). The experience of nostalgia is melancholic, and can be affirming in one’s sense of identity, stability and continuity. Many theorists have equated the rise of heritage and nostalgic feelings with times of discontent and anxiety (Davis, 1982; Hewison, 1987; Holbrook and Schindler, 1991; Holbrook, 1993; Routledge et al., 2011). Nostalgia provides an escape from the discontent present and the fearful future; an outlet to connect back through the ages and across social divides. This work explores these themes of nostalgia at the English seaside resort, where tensions between authenticity and artifice, escapism and isolation, and the everyday and the whimsical are the foundation of its sense of place.

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Nostalgia is a memory that has become distorted, idealised and selectively retold. It represents both a longing for the past and a dissatisfaction with the present (Davis, 1982; Holbrook and Schindler, 1991; Holbrook, 1993; Dann, 1995). Nostalgia can be

categorised into ‘real’, ‘simulated’ and ‘collective’ (Baker and Kennedy, 1994). The collective and simulated nostalgia considered herein is concerned with abstract images, pieced together from retellings and artefacts of the past and not through direct experience. Collective nostalgia counteracts uncertain futures and yearns for simpler times. While rebelling against different political ideologies and the simplicity of the early modern world, there is an inevitability to nostalgia that seeks to return to the ease of childhood.

Chapter Two

Peripheral

Travelling to the seaside

Every hour or so a train would come down the Tram Road with passengers for the crosschannel ferry to France. The sailings caused great excitement on the sands as they created large waves. For those not expecting the sudden surge of water there was a risk of being bowled over or having possessions swept away. INTERVIEW A

I never felt isolated growing up. It was just different then, there were never the restrictions that we now put on our children. We could just go off. But no, I think we had a really good childhood there, which I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say it would be today. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d go off with our friends, up the cliff path and we had little camps and things. It was great. INTERVIEW B

At the Harbour Arm in Folkestone, the trains used to go across it and meet the ferries. But that started to look shabby when the ferry train stopped. I do recall watching the golden arrow come in there once, sometime. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very steep incline down to the harbour, so it always had a shunter train as well to try and slow it down and then trying to get it back up the slope. I think as a kid that was always quite exciting, because you were that close to it, you could literally get right up to it. And Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure today that health and safety would have a fit to see how close you could get to it. INTERVIEW C

The reason we came to Folkestone was my mums a little bit of a working-class snob and thought that Folkestone was a little bit more upmarket than Margate or Broadstairs or Ramsgate or Herne Bay. It was Fashionable Folkestone! So, we came to Folkestone, we visited other places as well, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where I learnt my love of Folkestone and why Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m here now, all those years later. I did my first foreign trip on the ferry of course, from Folkestone to Boulogne. So that gives you a flavour of what Folkestone meant to a 10-year-old boy in 1963. INTERVIEW D

Going to catch the train was absolutely... you could not believe it now. You would walk down onto a wooden station and it would be absolutely jam-packed. But everybody was in a good mood. Kids were being lifted up. It was unbelievable. Everybody was going on holiday, at the same time, on a Saturday obviously. It was Saturday to Saturday. Everyone from south east London was going to Margate and environs. East London were going to Southend and whatever, wherever the train went. I remember my uncle; he went to Whitstable and nobody could believe it. ‘Whitstable?! What the hell are you going to Whitstable for?’ They haven’t got a beach, it’s sort of shingle. INTERVIEW E

I was brought up in Chelsea, so that wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t far from Victoria coach station, so that was where the coach went from. The other thing I remember with all that, is sometimes coming back, because we sort of lived on the river in Chelsea, the coach going back to Victoria would pass our door, so I always remember dad fishing in his pocket and going up to the driver and trying to give him 5 bob, or 10 shillings or whatever and saying would he stop. They werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t allowed to, but sometimes they did. INTERVIEW F

Woolwich station was always pandemonium! The booking hall impossibly crowded, with queues snaking round and round from the ticket window, children being carried, stood on cases, told off, clumped and immediately tickled, crying and laughing. Hair was rumpled by complete strangers; adults would have impromptu fencing matches with fishing nets; everybody was in fine good spirits. These were the same people who, fifty weeks in the year, would be reading their papers in silence while standing on the other platform, the one that went to London Bridge and Charing Cross. INTERVIEW G

I was born in Ashford and the closest town for a day out if you like was Folkestone, but my parents had some army friends and they had a daughter and we were more or less brought up together. So, every summer, I spent in Sandgate with her and we were only about 11. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d cycle into Folkestone on our own and swim in the salt-water swimming pool. I remember the white walls. It was freezing. It was absolutely freezing. And then weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d lose all our pocket money in the Rotunda at the fairs. INTERVIEW H

PERIPHERAL

was an asset and a necessary part of its identity as somewhere to escape to. Now, as domestic tourism has changed, this peripherality has come to signify an isolation; seaside resorts are away from the political and economic structures that govern the country and this distance has taken on a new meaning. The ritual of travelling to and arriving at the seaside is as much a part of interviewees’ holiday memories as the holiday itself. The seaside manifested as a counterpoint to increasingly polluted metropolitan centres. Urry describes the seaside as being for ‘leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated and organised work’ (Urry,

Ellen Peirson

Figure 7: The Harbour Arm on a Friday evening in August 2019

When the railway networks first reached out to the coastline in the 19th century, it would form the essence of the English seaside holiday. The train democratised the English seaside and it was no longer just the reserve of the aristocracy. Subsequently, these resorts have a reliance and interdependence on their closest metropolitan neighbours and perhaps nowhere is this expressed more strongly than between London and the South East coast. Small fishing villages were transformed into bustling seaside resorts; more recently the same resorts have been transformed into commuter belts to London. At the inception of the English seaside holiday, a resort’s peripheral nature

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Wish I Was There

1990, p. 2). He goes on to explore the psychological nature of visitors to the seaside as having ‘a clear intention to return “home’’ within a relatively short period of time’ (Urry, 1990, p. 3). As the city and the industrial world became formalised and ordered, and the working week was created, so too was the weekend and the holiday. The Industrial Revolution transformed the city into a place of order; the seaside responded as a place of disorder. It became a place to escape to, because the city was a place to escape from and so began a dependence of the seaside on its bustling metropolitan neighbours. Interviewees often describe transport to and from the seaside as theatrical narratives; journeys are remembered in the most minute of detail, from bribing the bus driver to stop outside one’s front door, to impromptu

fencing matches with fishing nets. Interviewees recalled that often holiday destinations were often chosen on the basis of easiest journeys, generally in relation to transport hubs closest to the participants’ homes. For those who lived in Folkestone permanently, the presence of the railway and harbour was just as spectacular. In discussions of Folkestone Harbour’s train service specifically, there is excitement imbued in just watching the trains traverse the Harbour Arm, and the strong waves caused by the ferries as they came to meet the trains. This implies it was a key element to being on the harbour, and one interviewee described in detail the sense of loss felt in the station closing and observing its decline. It is largely accepted that it was the railways that expanded seaside towns into the resorts that we know today

Figure 8: Rail links between London, Folkestone and Europe

PERIPHERAL

Figure 9: Folkestone Harbour Station, recently refurbished as a public garden and walkway

41 (Walton, 1979). While seaside towns exist for a variety of reasons (connotations with royalty, the perceived health benefits of the sea, an increase in disposable income, formation of annual holidays and the birth of tourism more generally), many thrived due to the introduction of railway networks. Walton provides four reasons for this: opening up existing resorts to new catchment areas, attracting railway lines based on speculative improvements in visiting numbers, providing struggling ports and fishing villages with a new industry and, perhaps least common, the creation of new resorts on previously empty stretches of coastline.

*** The prospect of journey is imbued in both the temporal and the spatial. The experience of the space is only ever temporary, and its meaning is cemented in this (Urry, 1990). Massey’s reflections on space and place are always underpinned by the notion that space cannot be separated from time, rather that the two are dynamically woven together (Massey, 1991, 2001). In For Space, she proposes that space can be understood using three key propositions: firstly, as the product of interrelations, themselves built on interactions at all scales; secondly, that

Ellen Peirson

‘Defoe called it ‘a miserable fishing town’, and a handbook of 1848 implies that it was nothing more as late as 1840. However, to quote the Handbook, ‘The wand of the railway wizard was

waved over it, and Folkestone has been resuscitated’. The fishing town became a fashionable, if staid, seaside resort and has remained one ever since.’ (Newman, 1969, p. 326)

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Wish I Was There

it is heterogeneous, in which distinct narratives co-exist; and thirdly, that it is constantly in the process of being made, it can never be finished (Massey, 2005, p. 9). She demonstrates these propositions and how they interact in understandings of space through the example of a train journey: At either end of your journey, then, a town or city (a place) which itself consists of a bundle of trajectories. And likewise, with the places in between. You are, on that train, travelling not across space-as-a-surface (this would be the landscape – and anyway what to humans may be a surface is not so to the rain and may not be so either

to a million micro-bugs which eave their way through it – this ‘surface’ is a specific relational production), you are travelling across trajectories. That tree which blows now in the wind out there beyond the train window was once an acorn on another tree, will one day hence be gone. That field of yellow oil-seed flower, product of fertiliser and European subsidy, is a moment – significant but passing – in a chain of industrialised agricultural production. (Massey, 2005, p. 119)

This is to say that space is not simply a vessel in which things can happen, but it is altered by virtue of a visitor’s presence, either in one space, or their

Figure 10: The newly restored Harbour Arm, reopened in 2016 as a promenade and a food, drink and entertainment venue

PERIPHERAL

absence from another. The significance of the journey in the sense of place of a seaside resort is imbedded in the resort’s existence on the periphery. Folkestone was created to counter London – visiting Folkestone was bound up in a need to escape industrial London. Folkestone would lose its identity as an escape if there was nothing to escape from. This produced a reliance on the city and one that persists today in a different guise. The decline, and subsequent regeneration of Folkestone, can be seen through the context of two large infrastructural developments, the opening of the Channel Tunnel (1994) and the arrival of High Speed 1 (HS1) (2007). The Channel Tunnel, on the outskirts of Folkestone, not only led to the closing of Folkestone’s passenger ferry service, but also ended its existence as a stop-off point on the way to the continent. HS1 brought London jobs closer to Folkestone, creating a wave of commuters to spend their time and money in London.

While these large infrastructure projects jeopardise Folkestone’s sense of place and meaning as a seaside resort, it is important to remember two of Massey’s foundational notions of place: that it is bound to time and that it is constantly being made. To consider English seaside resorts as an artefact (and thus its sense of place) requiring preservation, is to deprive them of the sense of becoming that is central to the idea of place. This is also a rejection of the innovation that such places were built upon – when such infrastructure developments were heralded for the opportunities they afforded: the creation of the seaside holiday.

*** While Folkestone has seen huge improvements in its main infrastructural network, the trainline which so often inspires nostalgia in interviewees has been neglected. Many seaside railway stations are located in town centres, avoiding the steep drop down to the harbour. In Folkestone, the trains would take passengers straight to the edge of the town, over the harbour and leave

Ellen Peirson

The original Victorian rail networks brought Folkestone close enough to London for it to be reachable but kept it at a suitable distance for it to be considered an escape; a key component of the tourist’s experience (Urry, 1990). HS1 brought Folkestone directly within the commuter circuit and the peripheral dichotomy expanded as London residents were drawn to the cheaper property in Folkestone. HS1 was a key catalyst in the private sector spending in Folkestone and has had perceived benefits. This

reveals the first contradiction of many in the redevelopment of the seaside. Folkestone’s very identity is as a place to escape to; its existence at the ‘end of the line’ had value for early holidaymakers. When tourism faded, what once was escapism turned to an isolation. HS1 aimed to fix that. Yet in doing so, it threatened Folkestone’s foundational identity as a retreat.

CHAPTER TWO

Figure 11: Folkestone Harbour Station in 1997

Wish I Was There

them at the Harbour Arm, where the passenger ferry terminal was located. In 2001, the last passenger ferry departed Folkestone Harbour. Its adjoining train station continued to be used by rail tour operators and the Venice Simplon Orient Express London to Paris line until 2009. The service terminated at Folkestone Harbour Station, where passengers were transferred by coach to the Eurotunnel terminal, which is itself on a separate trainline. There is an alternative direct trainline from London to Paris, but to take the detour to Folkestone Harbour is to indulge in the much more complicated journey of a bygone age. The significance of Folkestone Harbour Station exists in a time before places became non-places. Transport hubs have now come to be synonymous with

a placelessness, due to the postmodern condition; transportation was previously a privilege to be displayed outwardly. In decades to come, transport terminals would come to be anonymous and places to disconnect (Auge, 1995). But post-war era visitors were there for the opposite reasons. The Harbour Station was a common space where people of all kinds would meet. Today, a visit to the Harbour Arm at Folkestone reveals the same structure, but the place, as bound to time and interrelations, is different. What previously was a space of utility, toil and transition, has become a site of leisure. Though the seaside resort has been the preserve of leisure for centuries, this site in particular is unique. It was never built with the intention of drawing visitors in: people passed through and not to it. However, as a site that was so unique

PERIPHERAL

Figure 12: Folkestone Harbour Station in 2019

45 in the experience of holidaymakers, it has now been adopted by the nostalgia industry. The customs house, signal box and platforms have been restored to a near perfect image of what they might have looked like. Historic postcards reveal that the restoration is inaccurate, but in its attempt to recreate from blurred memories of the past, this is seemingly unimportant. The customs house is now an events space, the railway track and platforms are a public park, the signal box hosts Bobbie’s Bakehouse.

In Raphael Samuel’s 1994 Theatres of Memory, he distinguishes between heritagisation and what he dubs ‘retrochic’. Heritage is obsessive in its recreation and remembering of the past. Retrochic prefers to pick and choose what it remembers of the past. Where heritage is the event, retrochic is the memory of the event. Unsentimental, retrochic ‘is untroubled by the cult of authenticity’ and can be seen manifest

Ellen Peirson

Folkestone’s ongoing regeneration implies that the degree to which nostalgia is employed in the regeneration of seaside towns remains superficial. The distance from polluted metropolitan centres is what generated their significance and provided a realm permitting freedom in behaviour and design. The reason seaside towns have

become home to such unique typologies is due to their sense of ‘otherness’ (Gray, 2006). The predominant approach to seaside regeneration has brought them closer to cities, which in itself does have benefits. However, through the regeneration of such structures such as the Harbour Station, they now try to present a veiled sense of ‘otherness’ that only a peripheral state of existence can permit.

CHAPTER TWO

JUNCTION STATION (CLOSED)

duc

Via

Cliff h c Bea ds an

E a st

CENTRAL STATION

Outer Harbour

Inner Harbour

HARBOUR STATION (CLOSED)

e Be Folkeston

ach

HARBOUR ARM TO

BOULOGNE

Lighthouse

Wish I Was There

Figure 13: Former ferry and rail networks at the Harbour Arm

in the preservation of the built or natural environment, and perhaps more convivially in the use of period features in a modern house (Samuel, 1996, p. 112). The preservation of Folkestone Harbour Station is archetypally â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;retrochicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in borrowing certain aspects of its history and neglecting others. In doing so, this regeneration tells a story of Folkestone in an attempt to

recreate a disputable history. But in this, the developers have given the place a story and this, although not directly experienced, can contribute to the sense of place. Meaning can be transplanted onto a place through stories and retellings often unconnected to the place itself. This is further explored by Massey

PERIPHERAL

in her theories of the global sense of place. She asserts that the interrelations which form a place can be based within it, but also ‘stretch beyond it, tying any particular locality into wider relations and processes in which other places are implicated too’ (Massey, 1994, p. 120). Folkestone’s identity as a resort is influenced by the formation of ideals of the English seaside more generally and indeed its relationship with London.

The Folkestone & Hythe Local Plan states that they ‘wish to retain a range of good quality accommodation in the district, which will appeal to all types of tourist and seeks to resist the loss of visitor accommodation where this would be detrimental to the tourism role of the district’ (Folkestone and Hythe District Council, 2006, para. 6.11). It also suggested a Hotel Improvement Scheme, although this has yet to be developed 13 years later (Folkestone and Hythe District Council, 2006, para. 6.12). The District Council have taken the stance that retaining and improving hotels in the area is key to its prosperity. However, continued investment in rail infrastructure in the area paired with the rising popularity of Airbnb means that the hotel continues to struggle (Wood, 2011). 2 The regeneration of the Folkestone Harbour area provides critical insight into the selectivity with which nostalgia can be employed. Preserved is the imagery that was emblematic of Folkestone as a peripheral place, but the otherness itself that produced these motifs is increasingly abandoned. Regeneration efforts in Folkestone have tried to do two things: maintain a sense of otherness, while also increasing connectivity to London. By trying to do two opposing things, neither have succeeded.

Ellen Peirson

2. The referenced report suggests that demand for budget hotels is still high, while other areas of the market are dwindling. It references the recent regeneration in only improving demand during the Folkestone Triennial, which is held every three years.

The seaside’s feeling of otherness and detachment presents many unwieldy concerns in relation to how improved transport networks might threaten its sense of place. However, in this increased connectivity there are the much more straightforward issues as to what this might do to a hotel industry under threat by the ever-increasing proximity of London. While all entertainment and leisure facilities are vulnerable to popular taste, hotels are particularly vulnerable in that they serve a function of providing accommodation and as such are susceptible to decline when improvements in transport infrastructure render their function less useful. Walton described this trend as seaside towns become less like resorts and ‘more like suburbs which happened to be at the seaside’ (Walton, 2000, p. 47). In February 2019, the Minister for Culture, Chris Smith, began to offer grants in an effort to attract visitors to seaside towns, including to increase the number of day-trippers. In the same year, the Which? hotel guide did not recommend a hotel in any of the large seaside resorts (Walton, 2000,

p. 47). Increased connectivity created the day trip; the day trip made the hotel unnecessary.

Chapter Three

Liminality

Existing on the edge

On the sands, hundreds sunbathed either on towels or on deck chairs. At the end of the war there was a large wreck beached on the sands which we used as an exciting although dangerous playground, but it was soon broken up and removed. Most of the children swimming in the sea wore woollen swimming costumes knitted by their mothers. The problem with these was that they stretched down below the knees when wet. INTERVIEW A

We knew everyone and there was a real community of people who would just arrive there. Not just the people who lived on the front but people who lived way back in the town. There were regulars and you would get to know all of these people and it was great! And we would have a barbecue in the evening, and we had friends that would come down with their boats and it was just lovely. I have really good memories of it. There was a jetty that we would swim out to and jump off and dive into the sea. Just great memories. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember at what point that stopped. INTERVIEW B

Well I think it’s, to use the cliché, it’s in the blood a bit, if you’ve been brought up, being able to spend half an hour, 20 minutes at the seaside, it has a certain attraction. The openness of it, as I said the freshness of it, the ability to walk and see things, and in the past perhaps, or even now, seeing other people doing the same thing has that social connectivity. You don’t have to talk to everyone. So, I do think there is an attraction from that point of view because it tends to attract like people, and people whether it’s a class or a social thing, tend to feel comfortable amongst their own social class. INTERVIEW C

We are the nearest town to Europe. 19 miles. From here to Cape Gris-Nez is the shortest distance between us and mainland Europe. It’s not Dover, it’s here. I just have an emotional connection with Europe as well and the last few years have only enhanced that. So being able to see it, I like it. And I have to say, I wouldn’t say this to any locals, but their white cliffs are whiter than ours. But looking out there on a night when it’s really clear and the light, you can literally almost touch it. And I like that connection with Europe. INTERVIEW D

As the years went by, two or three other families would be with us and there would be up to ten of us to roam round and just generally be a nuisance to people. That was it, all day long was spent on the beach. The passing crowds were also entertained by us urchins. When the tide was high we loved to jump or dive into the sea from the Stade or the East Head, a practice frowned on these days but then we did not have Health and Safety. INTERVIEW E

My dad was in the navy, before the war and during the war, so the sea was always important to him. So, at his funeral we played the sea song, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember it. Eternal Father, Strong to Save? That was the power of the sea. This whole thing of living on the sea was somehow part of our family ethos. The thing about the sea is the open spaces where youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got this movement of water. It just gives you time to think and meditate. It clears your head. INTERVIEW F

We were free and unconstrained. There were rock pools, the jetty, the amusements, the beach shop, the tap, notionally for footwashing before climbing the stairs to the promenade, but far more fun as a miniature river generator. The creation of which we regarded with sheer hatred and loathing anyone who had the temerity to actually want to wash their feet. INTERVIEW G

When you live in a town like Canterbury, well any city really, it’s very claustrophobic, because it’s a medieval town, because it’s surrounded by hills and traffic fumes just sit, particularly in the summer. So, when I used to come down to Folkestone, I used to come down on the bus and the minute I got off the bus, I thought I can breathe! I’ve got space in my head. You know what I mean? You know when architecture crowds you in? You’ve got the Channel there, the sea, to look out, it’s open. INTERVIEW H

LIMINALITY

59 Figure 14: Sunny Sands beach, as seen from the Harbour Arm

the evolving meaning of what it is to be ‘on the edge’. Participants attitudes towards the sea can be largely split into two categories: those who view the beach and the water as a playground of sorts, and those who appreciate the sea for its hypnotic and more intangible nature. All interview participants described the sea and the beach as being the main draw to a seaside resort and anything else, such as arcades and amusements as supplementary to this. Those who described the attraction of the water as being more mesmerising still largely maintain a very strong relationship with the seaside, either living there or visiting weekly. One participant described their affection for the sea as being ‘in the blood’, while another talks of their family’s relationship with the navy and how this has imbedded the sea into their

Ellen Peirson

The urban form of English seaside resorts had a unique role in attracting those seeking leisure and pleasure. The seaside resort has definitive characteristics – the promenade, the amusements arcade, the pier – all framed around the beach. This edge condition creates a distinctive urbanism that is created by the dramatic juxtaposition in the natural landscape, of land and sea, and the social landscape, of resorts created as a playground for holidaymakers. Analysing this urbanism unravels the complex interplay of classes, tastes and relationships bound up in the most quintessentially English of holidays. This chapter explores the nature of this liminal zone; the freedoms it has created; the behaviours it has both inhibited and promoted, and the divisions it has both enforced and broken down at different points in its history. This is an attempt to understand

CHAPTER THREE

Wish I Was There

‘family ethos’. Many of the participants mention the chance encounters that the beach affords. In interview B, they talk of how everybody would ‘just arrive there’; in interview G they describe being ‘free and unconstrained’; in interview C, they describe the ‘social connectivity’ of the beach, this time in relation to being more ‘comfortable amongst their own social class’. The beach features heavily in participants’ vision of Folkestone as a ‘place’ and as discussed by Massey (2005), place is a product of these interrelations. As a facilitator of said interrelations, the beach is key to Folkestone’s identity. An exploration of class and taste at the seaside reveals inherent contradictions within the wealth of literature that exists. The beach is presented as a place of freedom and escape, where theoretically the barriers of social class should thus

be broken down, but the seaside can also vehemently reinforce these barriers (Shields, 1991; Preston-Whyte, 2008). In Elizabeth Bowen’s 1938 novel The Death of the Heart, Seale-on-Sea and Southstone (fictional depictions of Hythe and Folkestone) are used as a tool to explore the upper classes’ increasing fears that English standards are becoming more common and that their cultural realms are becoming invaded by the middle classes. Folkestone’s built environment exemplifies the shift from the seaside as a place of luxury for the upper classes, to the realm of debauchery. The town effectively has two promenades: The Leas, a parkland promenade at the top of a steep cliff face to the beach, and a more typical waterfront promenade at the harbour below. As was typical with nineteenth-century resorts and

Figure 15: Folkestone’s clifftop promenade, The Leas

LIMINALITY

Leas/beach map

THE LEAS

SEAFRONT

61 Figure 16: Map showing the separation between The Leas and the seafront, and the cliff which acts as a physical barrier dividing the two

the aristocratic clientele they attracted, the seafront promenade was removed for a time, in favour of the semi-private Leas where stewards would enforce a strict dress code (Rennie, 2009). This was a reaction to the increasing democratisation of the beach. While The Leas continued to favour the enforcement of social classes and divisions, at the beach below, a pleasure park was forming, where classes and divisions were being torn down.

Whether upholding the status quo of the Victorian era, or breaking it down in the post-war era, there was an accepted set of behaviours. However, between the seaside and the sea is a transition zone: the beach. In interviews A, B, E and G, participants recall the beach as being a playground of sorts. Even the most functional of beach paraphernalia were adopted for the sake of play. Elborough (2010) proposes that ‘perhaps, in a sense, every trip to the beach as an adult is an attempt to recapture lost innocence or at least to feel as carefree as a child’. Of course, at the whims of a childhood imagination, anything can become a playground. Yet there is something unique about the components of the beach that intensify this. The relationship between children

Ellen Peirson

By the time that Folkestone had been popularised as a seaside resort, and at the time that interview participants would have lived or holidayed there, The Leas was fully open to the public. When discussing childhood memories, participants only recall the harbour and seafront. The Leas is often discussed as a striking feature of Folkestone’s landscape, but it never seems key to

memories, or to be discussed with such affection as the seafront itself.

CHAPTER THREE

and their environments has been called ‘primal landscapes’ by human geographers and has been proven to influence environmental choices later in life (Measham, 2007). ***

Wish I Was There

Despite the unpredictability of the sea, seaside towns frame themselves around the water and their architecture ‘makes the most of being on the front’ (Gray, 2006). Most seaside developed because of the sea, in their first incarnations as fishing villages and ports. The perceived healing capabilities of the sea later brought visitors and a new tourism industry. It is therefore apt that the urbanism of the archetypal seaside town celebrates the sea and upholds it as a focal point. This relationship of a vast and open sea, a townscape built to face it and the beach dividing the two, has provided a medium through which theorists have sought to explore the meaning of transitional spaces and the behaviours that are both product and producer of this. In Reading the Popular, Fiske (1989) considers the division between nature and culture and how this becomes apparent at the seaside. Nature, that which is pre-culture, before the cultural world and its rationalities have been applied, differs from the natural – nature to which culture has been applied. Just as the natural sits between nature and culture in a social structure, Fiske suggests that the beach sits between the sea and the land as a mediating space

in both a physical and social structure. Preston-Whyte later said of the beach: ‘visitors may seek, but not necessarily find, on these beaches a space where the stress of normal working lives is temporarily suspended, cultures merge, egalitarianism flourishes, and bonds of friendship are forged’ (Preston-Whyte, 2008). Bernardes asserted that the beach has always been the separating line between the order of land, and the chaos of the sea. It exists liminally, between time and space, occupying a threshold state that allows an escape from everyday life and its agreed codes (Bernardes, 2010). Liminal space authorises ‘moments of discontinuity in the social fabric’ (Shields, 1990, p. 47). Even before meanings of leisure transmuted the beach into ‘a public sidewalk, a harbour, a balcony, a terrace incorporating a bordering dimension’, the beach was synonymous with arrival and a refuge from the danger of the sea (Bernardes, 2010). While much can be said for the beaches marginal nature in creating a space for transgression and freedom in behaviour (and subsequently architecture), there is also a much more tangible argument to be made for the natural environment in influencing the early development of such behaviours. Corbin (1994) provided a close analysis of the definitive change in popular perceptions of the sea in the 18th century, from that which is intensely feared, turbulent and untameable, to something lush, therapeutic and deeply stimulating. This undoubtedly shaped the development

LIMINALITY

Figure 17: Sunny Sands beach at high tide

63 of the ‘seafront’ as we know it, with buildings on the edge beginning to face the water (Gray, 2006). Some 100 years after this shift in perception, similar trends developed in attitudes to sunshine and subsequently, sunbathing. While the emergent ideologies were progressive to medical professions, the trends also radically changed coastal resorts as they were transformed by a sun-oriented Modernist design. ‘Sun terraces, communal beach bathing stations, solariums, glass-clad entertainment pavilions, holiday camps and beach chalets’ began to appear along the coast with the objective of capturing the sun (Gray, 2009).

Ellen Peirson

Situated somewhere between the Art Deco of the 1920s and the International Style of the 1930s, a new style was emerging (Walton, 2000, p. 129). Known variously as Seaside Moderne,

Nautical Modern or the Ocean Liner Style, playful buildings, created for the sole purpose of leisure, began to appear on the coastline (Gray, 2009; Peter and Dawson, 2009; Steele and Jarratt, 2019). Consisting of smooth lines, flowing curves, nautical portholes, form following their function and always leisure-based, never residential; this form of modernism was diverse and brazen in a way that modernism further inland did not dare to be (Walton, 2000, p. 129; Gray, 2009). Few examples were hailed as iconic – perhaps only Bexhill’s De La Warr pavilion, Morecambe’s Midland Hotel and Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach casino. But even the mundane and the everyday forms of the style represented a definitive change in attitudes at the seaside. It became a place of absolute leisure, and the birth of its most distinguishing characteristic: sun-worshipping.

CHAPTER THREE

current beach

Wish I Was There

64 The seaside is widely unpredictable in terms of weather; although sunworshipping informed a vernacular style, this does not mean that the sun did always shine. Yet interviewees still remember when the ‘sun shone for the entire fortnight every year’, or less assertedly that ‘it was always sunny as your memory seems to tell you it was’. Here is a contradiction in the built environment of the seaside: much of the post-war architecture is built with the aim of worshipping the sun and the natural environment, yet much more is built to resist more violent weathers – the seaside shelter and the sea wall are key examples as they protect resorts from the wind, rain and sea. Peter Blundell Jones, in his 1991 essay In Search of Authenticity, explored the notion of the ‘stage-set’ in architecture. While a common criticism of Post-

Modern buildings, he explores how the phenomena is apparent in more popularly acceptable buildings: the baroque church with its ‘illusions and tectonic fictions’; Asplund’s Skandia Cinema which was ‘created as a deliberate fantasy world’; the fairground with its ‘false solidity and mock grandeur’; all of which we accept without question in all of their pretence and insincerity (Blundell Jones, 1991). All of this is bound to the idea of what it is to be authentic, which itself is profoundly subjective and dictated by popular taste. While Folkestone’s Harbour Station prompts the strongest questions of authenticity in the town, this lens can be applied to the adjacent beach more generally. In Places on the Margin, Shields describes the beach as ‘the locus of an assemblage of practices and of

Figure 18: The new boardwalk from the harbour towards the Lower Leas Coastal Park, as seen from The Leas

LIMINALITY

65 Figure 19: The approved seafront development, design by ACME, on behalf of the Roger De Haan

customary norms which, attached to the notion of ‘beach’, transformed its nature into a socially defined zone appropriate for specific behaviours and patterns outside of the norms of everyday behaviour, dress and activity’ (Shields, 1991, p. 75). The meaning of the beach is greater than the site it occupies and, as with Massey’s theories of space and place, cannot be disentangled from the interrelations that it affords.

This same section of beach today has been cleared of the Amusements Park that stood derelict for over a decade. Imported shingle has created a beach three times as wide as before. A single boardwalk meanders through the centre of it, breaking at two points to lead to follies from previous triennials. Seaside architecture was once described by Gray (2006) as ‘an artificial confection

Ellen Peirson

Folkestone has two distinct beaches, separated by a harbour, and therefore two spaces that it might be considered a ‘seafront’. To the east, is Sunny Sands (formerly East Cliff Sands), a small bay, sheltered by the cliff face and completely submerged at high tide. To the west is the beginning of a much longer stretch of beach where Folkestone’s iconic Rotunda Amusements Park once was, and before that, the open-

air lido and boating pool. In their early development, seaside resorts were seen to encourage drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling and general debauchery, so those behaviours might be exhausted there and did not occur in the ordered city (Billinge, 1996). In particular, the beach provided a space where visitors’ ‘reputations, and status, their woes, wrangles and problems with others were[…]suspended in an edifying limbo’ (Franklin, 2014, pp. 144–145).

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designed to entice people seeking leisure and pleasure’. This stretch of beach, while offering spaces for contemplation, to connect with nature and to walk, does not embody the liminal, transgressive state that theorists have grappled to understand for decades (Fiske, 1989; Shields, 1991; Billinge, 1996; Preston-Whyte, 2008; Burleigh and Jung, 2011).

Wish I Was There

In April 2018, plans for 1000 new homes, as well as commercial space, in the Folkestone Harbour area were approved by the District Council. The majority of these are sited on the recently reclaimed beach (the beach being reclaimed to make way for this development). The illustrative plans seem to take inspiration from the streamlined seaside modernism of the 1930s in their detailing, while the form borrows from the adjacent Marine

Crescent. Blundell Jones described the ease of architects succumbing to ‘temptation to dress up their buildings in borrowed raiment of all kinds’ (Blundell Jones, 1991). The buildings they borrow from were built for the landscape of leisure which was ‘more in scattered buildings than in whole developments…recreational rather than domestic architecture’, making it fundamentally opposed to the use and form of the proposed development (Walton, 2000, p. 129). This is part of the same development as the recent transformation of the Harbour Station, which, as discussed in Chapter Two, can discernibly be read as a stage-set, employing nostalgia as a key agent in its restoration. Each plot in the development is arranged around a courtyard, the front most of which interestingly face away from the water; the water that developments in Folkestone hitherto

Figure 20: Seafront-facing buildings on Marine Parade

LIMINALITY

have framed themselves around. The residential development is subtle in its borrowing of seaside vernacular yet reveals something more sinister as it uses this guise to encroach on the traditionally democratic space of the beach; whether the courtyard gardens are officially private or not, they begin to enclose the previously free and open seafront. When interviewees talk of attractions of the seaside now, it is this very openness that is so key. In interview H, the participant talks of how in the city, ‘architecture crowds you in’. They say that when they get to the sea: ‘I can breathe! I’ve got space in my head’. This is obviously an important aspect of the seaside, and recent developments in Folkestone have sought to recreate an architecture that this edge condition provided in terms of worshipping the natural elements. However, in doing so, they are eradicating the free and open space of the beach. Of course, the beach was developed in the past, but this was a public place, which celebrated the edge condition. This provokes questions of authenticity in the desire to seek an aesthetic that the edge condition created but with a use and environment that is totally divorced from this.

Viewing the proposed seafront development through this lens, in addition to Massey’s call to understand the local through a global sense of space, it is possible to understand the neither the preservation of the demolished pleasure park, Folkestone’s previous identity, or the proposed residential development, Folkestone’s new identity, are appropriate. Folkestone deserves to have a continuing trajectory beyond its existence as a seaside resort; it is also possible to do this without the eradication of the public space that built this identity, the beach. Within her argument for a global sense of place, Massey (1994) discusses the diminishing relevance of the boundaries of places and the continual necessity to draw and redraw administrative and political boundaries as reinforcing divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. However, she reasons that in ‘almost any real place, and certainly one not

Ellen Peirson

There is a common concern in the UK about the decline and privatisation of public space. As local authorities are increasingly underfunded, public space has been sold off at an alarming rate. One space that was seemingly safe from this is the beach. Much of the land between

high tide and low tide is still owned by The Crown and even despite this, the beach is a challenging space to build and is therefore, to many developers, not viable. The proposed developments on Folkestone beach have been met with considerable opposition (Batty, 2016; Castle, 2018). Massey argues that ‘the very fact that [public spaces] are necessarily negotiated, sometimes riven with antagonism, always contoured through the playing out of unequal social relations, is what renders them genuinely public’ (Massey, 2005, p. 153).

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Wish I Was There

defined primarily by administrative or political boundaries, these supposed characteristics have little real purchase’ (Massey, 1994, p. 152). This is an incredibly relevant argument in relation to the surrounding towns and villages, and indeed other smaller seaside resorts. However, the beach is an unavoidable physical border, which the town cannot turn its back on. For all the beach’s opportunities as a site of freedom, social interactions and community cohesion, it can also act as a constant reminder of the UK’s precarious position within Europe, at which Folkestone is on the frontline. All interviewees were saddened by the prospect of Brexit and most saw it as another threat to Folkestone’s prosperity. Yet in the 2016 EU referendum, the Folkestone and Hythe district voted to leave by 61.64% (House of Commons, 2017). This is important in recognising that the sampling of the interviewees, in maintaining homogeneity as an IPA study dictates, will give radically different opinions to many of the current residents of Folkestone. Additionally, with a fertility rate of 1.74 children per woman, the UK has not had the required fertility rate of 2.1 to replace its population since 1976, and therefore it is ageing (Eurostat, 2019). In order to

maintain a healthy demographic in its population, migration into Folkestone is key. The threat of the ever-present border in Folkestone is harmful to its ageing population. The edge condition explored herein, as with any seaside town, is inescapable in Folkestone. Whether the urbanism seeks to face it, or to turn away from it, the dichotomy between the land and the sea is overt, and the beach must span this. As such, the beach will always occupy a liminal space. However, the changing meaning of the seaside town as no longer being able to exist purely as a resort and the depreciating need for a space just for ‘reckless enjoyment’, creates a threat to that liminality in the social realm, and the transgression it associates with (Shields, 1991, p. 73). The beach is a key element in all interviewees’ experiences of the seaside and arguably foundational in their personal sense of place. While this is rooted in the opportunities afforded by the natural environment, it cannot be unravelled from the formation of the pleasure park, and the tendency towards the excess that this created. This leads to Chapter Four; the excess, the outrageous, the debauch, but the commercial.

LIMINALITY

1908

1938

Today

Ellen Peirson

Figure 21: Three maps showing the evolution of Folkestone beach into an amusements park and back again

Chapter Four

Excess

Consumption on the beach

I remember one Fortune Teller/Weight Guesser who always, before reading the future for a customer would chant and guess their birth dates. It sounded very impressive. He also gave the crowd a prediction for some event that would happen in the year ahead, he assured us on one occasion that Princess Margaret would marry Peter Townsend within 18 months; his crystal ball must have been clouded that day. INTERVIEW A

I don’t remember any tension between tourists and residents. We did live in a hotel for some time growing up. And there were tourists of course, that was the business. I remember if there was tension in the town it was between the squaddies and the locals. But the tourism there was different to Canterbury. It was mostly people staying over night and then getting the ferry. We went to France fairly often. The whole day trip culture was in then. You’d have party boats going in the evening and there’d be a disco on the boat. INTERVIEW B

Certainly as a child, the seafront area was a major attraction, as I said previously, there were lots of families and it was obviously clearly holiday time, people enjoying themselves, there was the funfair, The Rotunda as it was called, which was a post-war concreate dome which had great attraction for me as a child. One particular thing that I can remember is the mechanical cranes that were in there. For a penny, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the old penny, and you used to put the penny in and then try and catch sweets in the crane when it dropped it, you had to control it and then it dropped it. The modern version of it now looks far slicker, in those days it really was cogs and handles to turn to pick up sweets. INTERVIEW C

The character of the seaside is about getting away from the everyday. It’s fun. It’s adventure. That’s what the seaside is all about. For a few hours or a couple of weeks it is a departure from the everyday. And that’s what the seaside has traditionally offered. It is a thing about coastal resorts… It is somewhere where you go and get away from it all. Or somewhere to go and hide. Perhaps throw yourself off the Harbour Arm or something, you know. Or the viaduct. And that is why, traditionally, you could look at every resort around the country and there are major social issues. INTERVIEW D

There wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any money now that I think about it. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t realise this obviously at the time. I had pocket money. So, when we went I had something like sixpence a day, maybe a shilling a day. Now, in old pennies, for a young lad, that was a lot. Invariably, it went straight on the amusements arcade, which nowadays it would be illegal for me to go in. I can still remember, there was one that was a favourite. There was four film stars. Ava Gardner was one of them, she was worth tuppence. You put a penny in and if she came up you got tuppence. Gregory Peck too. Jane Russell, I think was worth fourpence, Marilyn Monroe was worth sixpence but almost never came up. INTERVIEW E

As I was a little bit older, I was always found in the arcade. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d always be in the arcade at the slot machines. Not when I was tiny, obviously. When I was 8, 9, 10. I used to wonder round the slot machines and try and put my fingers in to see if I could find any coins or anything like that. I used to spend it on candy floss, ice creams, things like that. INTERVIEW F

We knew everything about the place; which fish shops would give us fish heads to go crabbing with; the best places to go crabbing; which machines in the arcade gave the longest playing time before all our pennies were spent; which ice cream parlour made the creamiest coffee and which had the biggest selection of ice cream flavours; where to play in the sand when the tide was in on a windy day, so that the sea would be washed over the jetty and perform for you alone; and a million other things; which shops had the cheapest beach toys; which had the boldest postcards which toilet cubicle had the faulty lock, where you could get in without ‘spending a penny’ or even better, where you could retrieve someone else’s penny and take it off to the arcade. INTERVIEW G

So, my childhood memories are of going to see the pantomime at the pleasure gardens, magical, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never forgotten that, I wish I could recapture that feeling. I was terrified it was going to end. In those days you had to dress up so I could put on my one and only best dress. After that I was lucky enough to see Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Russian pianist, also Yehudi Menuhin, Sir John Barbirolli, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic. INTERVIEW H

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81 Figure 22: The former Rotunda Amusements Park in 2002

Transgressive behaviours at the seaside once proliferated of their own accord, but as ideologies of consumption were born, this could be neatly packaged and sold. The outrageous was celebrated with a price tag and architecture featured as a prominent tool to draw in this consumerism. What follows is an examination of the culture of the excess and commercialism in the English seaside resort.

In 2007, amusement arcades in the UK together contributed ÂŁ500 million to the exchequer. However, between 2007 and 2016, the number of arcades declined by 56% (Chapman and Light, 2016, p. 256). While the amusements arcade form occupies an essential place in the character of the English seaside resort, representing the excess and the transgressive, commercially they have often been deemed unviable. Theorists have also sought to argue that they

Ellen Peirson

The socio-economic background of interview participants dictates their degree of engagement with consumerism in Folkestone, yet all of them mention the amusements arcade, whether they were able to participate or not. This aspect of the seaside holiday, in addition to the beach, is the element participants were able to describe in the most minute detail. From the game which revolved around Hollywood film stars of the era,

to the fortune teller whose predictions never quite came true, the amusements arcade appears to be as central to the seaside holiday as the seaside itself. Where the beach is about engagement with nature, the amusements arcade was an entirely imagined environment, built to be ludicrous and entertaining as an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;unambiguous symbols of modernityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Chapman and Light, 2016, p. 257).

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Figure 23: Entertainment area in The Grand Burstin

Wish I Was There

denigrate the image of seaside resorts due to more recent connotations with transgressive behaviours. (Kaplan, 1983; Fisher, 1995; Griffiths, 1998; Erens et al., 2004; Chapman and Light, 2016, 2017). Although amusements arcades did not begin to appear in seaside resorts until the beginning of the 20th century, they were a product of earlier ideologies of consumption (Chapman and Light, 2016, p. 257). In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption: the outward display of wealth through acquiring luxury goods and services in order to communicate economic power and social status (Veblen, 1899). Before massproduction and the democratisation of consumer goods, conspicuous consumption was a key part of the contemporary capitalist landscape

and the built environment of the seaside resort typified this. The natural environmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perceived healing capabilities transformed Folkestone into a retreat for the aristocracy, enticed by the supposed health benefits of bathing in the sea and breathing the sea air. Folkestoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first hotel, the Pavilion, was renamed the Royal Pavilion, supposedly after a series of royal visits from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The sea and air were once sought after for their healing properties, but as ideologies of consumption were being created, they became an asset, sought as an outward display of wealth. Amid this rising status, a new form of architecture started to appear in the town for the sole purpose of pleasure and leisure. The Leas and Promenade, bathing pools, the Leas Shelter, the Pleasure Gardens Theatre, the Victoria

EXCESS

Figure 24: Lighthouse Champagne Bar on the Harbour Arm

Twenty ladies, I was one of ‘em, all intent on having a spree Went to Folkestone for a holiday, dabbled our tootsies in the sea It’s a place where costers seldom go Look on us as low, Stuck up lot, you know I said, ‘Come girls, we’ll upset the show.’ So off we started for the day, with all our blokes in tow. And they haven’t got over it yet, you bet, we livened up the Town We painted Folkestone beautiful red, and came back lovely brown The would-be-if-they-could-be toffs, they wished us miles away Oh! didn’t we ‘ave a pantomime at Folkestone for the day. (Easdown, 1998, p. 32, quoted in: Keown, 2009, p. 182-3)

Ellen Peirson

Pier, the Grand, the Metropole and the Royal Pavilion all transformed Folkestone into ‘Fashionable Folkestone’ (Easdown, 1998, p. 33). This new realm became a centre for conspicuous consumption; visiting the Victorian seaside resort became about being seen to visit the Victorian seaside resort. This created a place, no longer a ‘retreat’, in the traditional sense, for spending and expressing expensive rituals. This surge of commercialism made it vulnerable to the capitalist popular tastes which underpinned the resort’s identity and, subsequently, the influx of middle-class visitors adopted the architecture of leisure as their own. There was a new tension in the town as the upper classes were forced to share their infrastructure of leisure. In 1898, music hall star Miss Marie Lloyd articulated this growing tension with a song at the Royal Pavilion hotel:

CHAPTER THREE

Folkestone’s response was to ‘use architecture to segregate the fashionable and respectable from the unsavoury and the rough’ with commanding entrances and guarded gates on The Leas (Gray, 2006, p. 53). This mechanism proved insufficient, and the English aristocracy quickly began to take their holidays abroad, leaving the resort to be adopted by the middle-class holidaymakers.

Wish I Was There

In 1907, the resort came under the management of the Forsyth Brothers and, as popular culture dictated, the entertainment became garish and flamboyant (brash and tasteless to others). They launched the first seaside beauty contest which, alongside ‘Dainty Afternoon Teas’, ‘Bouncing Dillon’s Comedy Gymnasts’, ‘Strong Men Wrestling’, ‘Ladies’ Orchestras’, and the ‘Covent Garden Opera’, cemented the resort in the cultural imaginary as the realm for unabashed entertainment (Keown, 2009, p. 183). At first the reserve of the middle classes, the trend made its way to the working classes, as working days and weeks became more formal, and with it, the weekend and annual holidays (Walton, 1981). The Folkestone Harbour area developed into a place for indulgence and opulence; somewhere to spend excessively and outwardly. A service industry formed as a substructure to this extravagance. As the primary offering at the seafront became tourism, this industry became the primary employment opportunity – alongside the fishing and ferry industries, which again sought to serve.

This produced what Massey (1994) considered a ‘spatial division of labour’ and involves an organisation of regional differences in order to allocate different forms of labour and maximise profit. Primarily, Massey conceptualises this within the same industries, as opposed to regionalising different industries. For example, one region provides strategic development direction jobs, while another region might provide more low-skilled production jobs. At the seaside, while the tourism industry predominately existed outside of the metropolitan centres, the two are inextricably linked as the seaside holiday was formed as a retreat from such centres. To add to this, areas that are considered ‘peripheral’ began to form a low-skilled, low-waged labour market, which the tourism industry only perpetuated (Massey and Meegan, 1979). As the seaside resort came to represent freedom and escape, the underbelly that supported this created a culture of isolation and entrapment. This tendency towards the excess, and the reputation of seaside resorts more generally as a place to break social norms, created in the English seaside a motif, one that has often been used in popular culture as a backdrop to tell very specific stories. While seaside resorts were originally used to tell stories of escapism and freedom, it has come to take on a much darker meaning. It is difficult to tell if this is an effect of the decline of seaside resorts, or if the wealth of popular culture meant that the seaside resort began to take on a new

EXCESS

Graham Greene’s 1938 novel, Brighton Rock, explores the underworld of Brighton and the gang wars that raged there. The popular, seemingly innocent resort is used to counteract a story of fear and loneliness on the ‘dangerous edge of things’ (Greene, 1938). The 1948 film adaptation begins with: Brighton today is a large, jolly, friendly seaside town in Sussex, exactly one hour’s journey from London. But in the years between the two wars, behind the Regency terraces and crowded beaches, there was another Brighton of dark alleyways and festering slums. From here, the poison of crime and violence and gang warfare began to spread, until the challenge was taken up by the Police. This is a story of that other Brighton now happily no more. (Boulting, 1948)

Figure 25 and 26: Stills from the 1948 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock

Ellen Peirson

meaning. As Williams (1973) identifies in his description of Rural England: myths of a place, when imbedded into contemporary popular culture, will come to function as a memory. Many theorists have sought to argue that the generalisation of the ‘English seaside’ has led to exacerbations of the social issues at the seaside, firstly in overstating how bad things might be in particular regions, and secondly in discouraging people from visiting and moving to the seaside. (Vickers, Rees and Birkin, 2003; Beatty, Fothergill and Wilson, 2008; Shah, 2011; Burdsey, 2016, p. 244)

While director John Boulting may have felt it necessary to point out that this darker side of Brighton is ‘now happily no more’, Brighton Rock arguably marks a shift in contemporary popular culture as the seaside embedded in the same metaphors of escapism and ‘otherness’, portrayals are darker, representing the isolated and the hopeless. In 1979, Quadrophenia uses Brighton as a battleground for the brawling mods and rockers (Roddam, 1979). In 1988, The Fruit Machine sees its leading characters escape to Brighton as they are on the run from an assassin and the police (Saville, 1988). Michael Winner’s 1993 film Dirty Weekend saw its protagonist take violent revenge on her stalker

CHAPTER THREE

(Winner, 1993). Each of these uses the seaside to tell stories of hopelessness, a pronounced shift from the early 20th century popular culture references of the seaside as a place of leisure.

Wish I Was There

In Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2000 film Last Resort, like the title suggests, the seaside is not there for leisure, but as the final option for a mother and son trying to claim asylum from Russia (Pawlikowski, 2000). Stonehaven (a fictional Margate) is ‘a landscape of barriers, including the coastal fringe, which pens the migrants in’ (Roberts, 2006). Here, all of the aspects of the town that represented freedom and escape to tourists (the railways, the fair, the beach) are used to subvert this imagery. The train station is closed until further notice, the funfair is deserted and only the ‘Dreamland Welcomes You’ sign remains. The expansive beach exists to remind the subjects of their own entrapment. In Tracey Emin’s 1995 short film, Why I Never Became a Dancer, she tells of her harrowing younger years in Margate. For Emin, Margate is the place she’s trying to escape from – not to. The freeness of the seaside is the same. She says that ‘there were no morals or judgements, I just did what I wanted to do’. She talks of leaving school at 13 and her wayward youth spent on Margate’s Golden Mile. But here, the seaside’s iconic features – the arcade, the lido, the fish and chip shop – are a backdrop for traumatic stories of humiliation and abuse (Emin, 1995).

Jellyfish, a 2018 independent film, follows the story of a teenager, Sarah, growing up in Margate as a carer to her young siblings and ill mother. For Sarah, the looseness and freedom of Margate’s Golden Mile and arcades do not represent freedom, but isolation. Sarah finds the prospect of Margate becoming ‘Shoreditch-by-the-sea’ laughable. The fantasies of the outsider are immediately subverted in the locality, as we see Sarah forced to perform sexual acts behind the arcade she works in, in order to get enough money for her family to survive. The amusements arcade is used here to represent the polar opposite of leisure

Figure 27 and 28: Stills from Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2000 film Last Resort

EXCESS

the country as ‘Eden’ and the city as the realm of capitalist production. Similarly, portrayals of the English seaside today can serve to ratify the seaside resort’s place as being for the debauch, the downtrodden and the hopeless.

Figure 29 and 30: Stills from 2018 independent film Jellyfish

and freedom. Seaside resorts have forever been a fantasy land for the British public, and for the viewer, this realism is jarring (Gardner, 2018).

*** The British seaside is generally regarded as the birthplace of mass entertainment industries and the ‘general commercialisation of workingclass leisure’ (Glennie, 1998, p. 930). The commercialisation discussed herein reveals three distinct tensions imbedded in the identity of Folkestone as a seaside resort, in the realm of pleasure. Firstly, the resort is a ‘retreat’, a refuge from everyday life, but one that historically involves the reinforcing

Ellen Peirson

These depictions of the English seaside are important, not only of the life that they seek to portray, but as a signifier to the public of what the English seaside is like now. Williams (1973) analysed images of the English countryside and city in English literature since the 16th century, to understand how they became symbols in the country’s conceptualisation of itself. They reinforced tendencies in England to view

As Massey’s global sense of place asserts, the identity of a place stretches beyond the place itself and can indeed allow for multiple identities. Folkestone’s identity is linked both to the specificity of the locality as a Kentish town, but also in relation to the English seaside more generally, and the role it played in the formation of the English seaside more generally. One might more readily compare Folkestone to Scarborough than to Tunbridge Wells; to Blackpool than to Ashford. Depictions of Margate and Brighton in popular culture have an influence on the sense of identity in Folkestone as they produce an image of English seaside resorts that exist in a shadow of their former selves.

CHAPTER THREE

Figure 31: Castle Dracula in the derelict Rotunda Amusements Park on Folkestone beach, 2006

Wish I Was There

of a century’s old social hierarchy. Folkestone began as a retreat for the aristocracy and, successively, was popularised for the upper, middle and working class as a holiday resort. Secondly, the resort is built to represent freedom, from the norms of the city, social customs and working life; yet these come to be strictly enforced, whether by the gatekeepers of the promenade, or the theorised ‘social control’ of mass-leisure in an attempt to police ‘safe’ workingclass behaviours. The opposite has also been suggested: working-class leisure is a resistance to social control and at the root of emergent working-class political cultures of the time (Thompson, 1981; Jones, 1994; Glennie, 1998, p. 930). Thirdly, there is tension in the role of the seaside resort as representing an arena for freedom and ostentatious

entertainment, which while perhaps established by the freedom of the natural landscape, has for over a century been a commercialised and commodifiable product. While this commodity may represent openness and abandon when packaged in the gaudy charm of cheap thrills and seaside glamour, the reality of the tourism industries, as places organised through capitalism, can be much darker. Walton said that ‘at the bottom of the seaside resort is an industrial town, selling access to and enjoyment of a desirable environment’ (Walton, 2000, p. 143). This produced within the towns an intense vulnerability to the seasonality and volatility of the industry. When the tourism industry began to fade, seaside resorts across England were left with an abundance of large guest houses that were no longer profitable. Owners

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Figure 32: Lubaina Himid’s Jelly Mould Pavilion from the 2017 Folkestone Triennial, on the site of the former Rotunda Amusements Park, 2019

89 The deprivation that is felt in the town now is not at all distinct from the excess and prosperity of its ‘golden age’. Rather, they are two sides of the same coin. The social issues that now plague the town must be viewed in the context of its identity as the realm of excess, indulgence and consumerism. Not only did this cement Folkestone’s identity as a place outside of social norms but, in a more practical sense, Folkestone was only built for the English seaside holiday – when the popular English seaside holiday ceased to exist, Folkestone nearly did too. The deprivation is both a direct result of the loss of tourism that Folkestone was built for, and the towns sole image as a place to escape to. Tourism diminished, but people continued to escape to Folkestone.

Ellen Peirson

found it more lucrative to convert these properties into Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) for housing benefit recipients. In a 2012 paper, geographer Darren Smith said that the ‘HMO is a key factor in the concentration of deprived social groups and reproduction of socioeconomic decline in some coastal towns.’ He attributed HMO properties to ‘spatial concentrations of deprived, unrelated, multi-person households; high population transience and density; downgraded residential environments; and fragile community cohesion’ in seaside resorts (Smith, 2012). The excess of such properties not only attracted more deprived tenants to the seaside, but surrounding local authorities of major cities also used seaside resorts to export their most vulnerable residents whom they could not afford to house themselves (Rickey and Houghton, 2009).

Chapter Five

Flux

Leaving the seaside behind

My memories are always of it being very cheap and nothing really mattered. But of course, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going back years ago when nobody had anything anyway. The idea that you were having a fortnight by the beach was already a lot. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t imagine that anybody in South East London would come out to a seaside town now. I assume people want something more exotic. I do. I go on foreign holidays. Nobody is going to want to put up with that nowadays. INTERVIEW A

In Folkestone, they’re kind of up against it. They’ve paid lip service to it with the old high street and the artistic quarter. But really, go back a bit and it’s dreadful, it’s really bad. So, I don’t know what the answer is really. INTERVIEW B

The Burstin has to get a mention at some point, that massive hotel in the centre of the quay area, by modern eyes its dreadfully ugly, which I think it is under any eyes really, but in its time I don’t recall it being ugly when I was young. It didn’t bother me then. I think it started to bother you now because the area around it has opened up more, so it is actually the centrepiece and it’s a deteriorating centrepiece. That’s going to need something doing to it one day. INTERVIEW C

It’s the darling of the press. Hardly a week passes without an article in the Independent or the Guardian or some fancy magazine about Folkestone’s regeneration. But, I see two Folkestones now. And this is not just Folkestone. It’s happening everywhere. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. And you see this divide. You look over that part of Folkestone, the old east Folkestone, Dover Road area. Urban, working-class, poor, deprived, then you look at this area, you know, middle class, arty farty, ‘Down from Londons’, investments, coffee shops, smart restaurants and so on. That physical divide is at the town hall, top of Rendezvous Street, because you come down Rendezvous Street, you’ve got the chocolate café, you’ve got Salentinos and the Bronx Deli and Market Square and Wonderland and all these new cafes and restaurants and so on, couple of nice gift shops. And then you get to the corner there and you hit Sandgate Road and never the twain shall meet. INTERVIEW D

Folkestone is my youth and my background. I was born and brought up in Charlton but the two are very much linked as sort of the golden age of youth. INTERVIEW E

Or could we have something new? Could the regeneration be third age money? Could there be old peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s camps, like holiday camps for old people, co-ops in seaside places? How could we think outside the box here and think about what do you do? What works? What do old people want? They probably want the quiet, they probably like the seaside. How could you regenerate places using vacant lifts and hotels of course. But if you did all that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d also have to have more hospitals for the old people. INTERVIEW F

The idea that anybody would be at all interested in holidays at Folkestone is close to my heart, is surprising to me. I can see you want to look at the regeneration business and how does one approach this, but the idea of that special, and it’s a moment in time of course, between the war and the, say, 1970s, there was that thing, English holidays were popular, it was the first time people could afford them. They had the leisure, they had the money, as long as it didn’t cost too much. It quickly got overtaken by foreign travel. It was a moment in time, I don’t see that ever happening again. Although, frankly, if we’re slung out of Europe and we can’t go to Europe, and global warming, people aren’t going to fly and that sort of stuff, maybe in another 30 or 40 years it will be the thing to do, go electric. With electric trains of course as opposed to steam trains. INTERVIEW G

Roger de Haan’s lifted the area. He’s provided things the council would never have done, like the Sports centre, Folkestone Academy, the Quarterhouse, but on the other hand that’s taking responsibility away from the council, they haven’t had to do anything. And it’s about time they did... We wouldn’t have anything it wasn’t for him. INTERVIEW H

100

FLUX

101

Figure 33: Tim Etchell’s 2014 Folkestone Triennial artwork Is Why The Place at the Folkestone Harbour Station

***

At the Harbour Station, Tim Etchell’s 2014 Folkestone Triennial artwork Is Why The Place references this temporality, with two large neon signs spelling out ‘Coming And Going Is Why the Place Is There At All’. This cursorily references the non-place that Auge (1995) identified: somewhere existing solely to be passed through. However, Etchell’s work is often concerned with the ruin and the incomplete (Etchells, 1999). It was first installed when the Harbour Station was abandoned and decaying. In this context, it seems to also reference the cyclical rise and fall of places and the inevitability but also fascination associated with the decay of Folkestone.

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Bound to all of the themes discussed herein, and central to this piece of research, are ideas of temporality. Folkestone existed as a place to be experienced momentarily. Embedded in the notion of visiting Folkestone was the acknowledgement that you would soon leave and therefore, presumably, Folkestone would go on without you. However, the prevailing cultural affection and nostalgia for Folkestone and the English seaside more generally, tends to expect that Folkestone stays as it is, even with the decades long decline in the domestic tourism that shaped it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Figure 34: Hotel lobby at The Grand Burstin on a Friday evening in August 2019

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When the tourist leaves a holiday destination, that place is then frozen in their memory in the image of their visit. But then what happens when all of the tourists leave? What happens when tourism dwindles, fashions turn elsewhere and the purpose the resort was built to serve is no longer relevant? Before Folkestone was popularised as a resort, it was a small and unremarkable fishing village; Folkestone’s urban and social renaissance as a bustling seaside resort saw its infrastructure and built environment multiply for this one purpose. Folkestone as it is today, emerged as a town of which the sole purpose was ‘to entice people seeking leisure and pleasure’ (Gray, 2009, p. 7). The formation of mass tourism, and with it the birth of the English seaside holiday, is closely tied to the Modern project, and capitalist ideologies of fashion and taste.

Therefore, it seems almost inevitable that ‘Fashionable Folkestone’ could not be fashionable forever. In Folkestone, although Roger De Haan’s investment in the arts and culture sector is admirable, the desired ‘gallery without walls’ continues to attempt to resuscitate a long since dead tourism industry, albeit with a different attraction. Folkestone’s position as a resort has changed; with its move ever closer to London, its position now only necessitates a day trip for many, and the role of the hotel has diminished. Seaside resorts existed to counteract the order and strict regimen of the city with a place for pure leisure. Today, this distinction is much less clear. ***

FLUX

Interview participants in the IPA study have a great affection for the Folkestone as it was at the time of their visits. Yet in discussing the potential future of the town, none suggest that a return to its former identity is necessary. In interview G, they describe it as ‘a moment in time, I don’t see that ever happening again’; in interview E, they say ‘nobody is going to want to put up with that nowadays’. It is perhaps the focus on reinvigorating tourism that interview participants (those that still have a relationship with the resort today), seem to either mistrust, or disapprove of, despite one participant describing it as ‘the darling of the press’. The IPA study demonstrates that it is possible to retain an enduring affection for Folkestone, as well as the seaside more generally, while also recognising that Folkestone will never quite be what it was.

The second half of the interviews were loosely structured around feelings towards Folkestone today and possible futures for the town. This presents a contradiction. Turning to the present and future of Folkestone, there’s an animosity towards the current regeneration and its effects. The IPA study sought to see the regeneration efforts in Folkestone through the eyes of the growing retired population. It demonstrated that despite their great affection for the town, interviewees saw the need for Folkestone to change and adapt; that it had always been a site of flux. This was paired with, in some interviewees, a fundamental distrust in the way in which the regeneration was being carried out. In interview H, although the participant talks of how lucky Folkestone is to have the philanthropy of Roger De Haan, they talk of how unsustainable such a system is, as it is ‘taking responsibility away from the Council’. Reading this on a surface level would demonstrate that despite the interviews showing a longstanding affection for the relics of the tourism industry, it is acceptable to now disregard this in

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This dualism in affection for the English seaside, and specifically Folkestone, is key in understanding attitudes towards such places today. All interviews started with the candidates presenting an indepth description of their memories of Folkestone, the places they still hold dear, and the activities they remember most fondly. Each description evokes a nostalgia for Folkestone that builds a collective affection, one that is embedded in its identity as a quintessentially English seaside resort, and as such adheres to the motifs of this character. Therefore, analysing this first section of each interview in detail would present an image of Folkestone in the imaginaries of each candidate (of which

there is little variation) that it could be argued is worth preserving. To do this, it would be necessary to preserve these physical motifs that form this image of Folkestone: the amusements arcade, the vast and open beach, the enclosed bay, the Harbour Arm train service, the more unwieldy liminal areas and spaces for consumption.

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favour of a new narrative for Folkestone. However, the will to regenerate and revive Folkestone, as it is coming from philanthropic sources, is rooted in this affection, which cannot be divorced from the physical structures of tourism that formed it. This is where the reading of the IPA study is key, to provide a deeper understanding than that which interviewees say on a surface level. As a result, the analysis suggests that some of these physical structures and sites must be preserved. However, placing these readings in the context of the relevant literature discussed herein makes clear an inherent contradiction as these sites and their associated behaviours can be linked to the downfall of English seaside resorts more generally; the tourism industry created a low paid and seasonal job market; the landscape of excess created a dysfunctional underbelly that had to support it; and resort’s very existence as places to escape to at the ‘end of the line’ contributed to their peripheral existence from political and economic structures that govern the rest of the country.

Wish I Was There

*** Through these findings, it is possible to suggest an alternative masterplan for Folkestone that is reframed in the context of an ageing population, the resultant dementia hotspots, and this population’s inevitable affections towards certain characteristics of Folkestone. This research argues that the previous masterplan for Folkestone was flawed in its adherence to a single

narrative. In order to create a resilient community, Folkestone must now seek to accommodate several narratives. This masterplan will focus on strengthening the town for the existing ageing population, while also sensitively preserving some of the relics of the tourism industry. This research explored Folkestone through four themes: peripheries, liminality, excess and flux. The results demonstrate that it is perhaps liminality that was so critical in the formation of Folkestone’s identity; peripherality, excess and flux were all a product of this edge condition. The town’s existence as an escape is seemingly embedded in its peripheral nature, but the edge condition is arguably dominant in this; people would travel until they could not go any further and this is the reason that this condition only exists at the seaside in England. Similarly, the excessive nature of a seaside holiday is linked to the liminal space of the beach, its sense of otherness, thus permitting a space for ‘reckless enjoyment’ (Shields, 1991, p. 73). The sense of flux and adaptation at the seaside is also inextricable from the unique form of the edge. The edge is characterised by the vast and open sea, which gave rise to each of Folkestone’s identities: from a small fishing village, to a wellness retreat, to a bustling seaside resort and a gateway to Europe via its port. Liminality created each of Folkestone’s most formative characteristics and formed the identity that so many hold dear. However, it also contributed to its eventual decline:

FLUX

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Figure 35: The Grand Burstin

an existence at the end of the line, the creation of a town built on consumption, a place for debauchery and an air of distrust by the permanent presence of the border to Europe.

The new infrastructure of dementia care will occupy the previous infrastructure of tourism. The grand hotels will be brought back into active use as care homes. The notion of architecture as a ‘stage-set’, previously explored in Chapter Two at the Harbour Station will be reimplemented to transform

Ellen Peirson

An alternative future for Folkestone, one that cares for the rapidly ageing population, must celebrate the town’s liminality. The meaning of the edge must be emphasised in preserving the sublimity of the sea and sense of ‘otherness’ of the seaside. In celebrating this edge, it is possible to see it less as a threat and more as an opportunity. While this masterplan would seek to care for an ageing population, it is important that it also looks towards maintaining and increasing the working population, which is vital in caregiving. This can be done in creating opportunities and instilling ambition in the young people of Folkestone by providing a new

sense of meaning, but also through encouraging migration into Folkestone as necessary in maintaining an effective population demographic. As discussed in Chapter Three, the UK has a fertility rate of 1.74 children per woman, below the rate of 2.1 children per woman that is required to replace the population. Below this level, the population demographic will age, and the working population will decrease. Therefore, a higher net migration is not in fact a threat, but key to maintaining a healthy population demographic.

CHAPTER FIVE

the hotels in care homes. However, it will seek to eschew the more recent use of the seaside in popular culture as a stage set that hides more sinister goings on – as explored in Chapter Four. In these examples, the ‘backstage’ represents transgression. The proposed ‘backstage’ will be the substructure of dementia care. These plans seek to cater to the nostalgia for the English seaside that drives regeneration efforts and encourages people to retire to Folkestone. While

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recognising the dangerous and often nationalistic effects of leaning on nostalgic images of England’s past, the IPA study has suggested that physical nostalgic structures are still important in a post-tourism landscape. Davis (1982) suggested that these can serve to act as a reminder of what has been lost, but this plan proposes a more hopeful use for the tourism infrastructure that, while also providing new meaning to the residents of Folkestone, can bring these oftenunderused buildings, back into a central and active use.

FLUX

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Conclusion

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CONCLUSION

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Figure 36: Folkestone Harbour Arm exit

The ghostlike qualities of Folkestone’s former grand tourism infrastructure are what initially inspired this research. Even prior to placing Folkestone within the theoretical framework of an authentic architecture, Folkestone seemed a stage set. A shell of Folkestone which used to carry the abandon and excess of the English seaside felt desolate without this.

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Massey (2005, p. 86) wrote of the oftennationalistic tendency to preserve a place in an image of itself; the contradiction of the powerful’s ‘right to one’s own place’ and increasing wish to move freely. In leaving a seaside resort, you will forever hold an image of it at the time of your

visit. But the wish that this is preserved and therefore readily available for you to ‘go back’ to, would subsequently deny the resort its freedom to change and adapt in a globalising world. Tourism has diminished in Folkestone, and visitor numbers will never reach the peaks that they did during the English seaside holiday’s height of popularity. Folkestone’s sense of place was a product of the interrelations that its lively tourism industry afforded and as such this place cannot be preserved without the interrelations that produced it. The IPA study confirmed Massey’s observations that place is always adapting and evolving and must be allowed to do so. Interview participants

Figure 37: Folkestone Harbour Station ‘way out’

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all described an unwavering affection for Folkestone as an English seaside resort and all the physical sites and structures that shaped, and were shaped by, this. Yet none of the participants suggested that a return to this former identity was necessary or indeed appropriate. The English seaside has become a symbol of a forgotten England; the physical becomes the metaphorical as the ‘end of the line’ and ‘the last resort’ is so often used to describe the area of the country that has seemingly been left behind. Popular culture reinforces this, as an area that was once used to describe stories of escape and freedom has turned to the realm of the isolated and destitute. As Williams (1973) similarly asserted of the English countryside, these representations can come to serve as a ‘myth functioning as a memory’. Alongside depictions of the

English seaside’s more prosperous past, this can create a wish to return to these supposedly better times. However, this research suggests that despite a resolute adoration for Folkestone and the misty-eyed tendency of viewing the past, within the retired population there is little will to return to this. They want a better and different future for Folkestone. This research was formed with the assumption that those who long for the ‘golden age’ of Folkestone most strongly, would also be those who wish to recreate, on the basis of the innate desire described by Massey, that the places we leave, and hold dear, should stay the same so we can return. Interview questions were formed to challenge or confirm this assumption. It was found that interview candidates unanimously agreed that Folkestone as an English seaside resort was a product of its time, and therefore cannot be recreated.

CONCLUSION

Folkestone will always be a product of its past, and as with Massey’s theories on place, its foundations as an English seaside resort are inextricable from its present and its future. This research has indicated that physical sites and memories of such do anchor a sense of place, but now that Folkestone is arguably struggling to maintain an identity as a resort, this is embedded in a discontent; nostalgia for Folkestone is rooted in this frustration. Current regeneration attempts try to recreate it in an image of itself; to make Folkestone look even more like Folkestone.

This thesis suggests that there is value in challenging the assumptions of what a particular population may want or need. Folkestone’s socio-economic position is creating an ageing population in itself, but retirees also gravitate towards the town due to its seaside location and feelings of nostalgia (Blaikie, 2001, p. 150). Therefore, the past and present experiences of Folkestone are paramount in creating a user-centric masterplan, as a place where the past drives so much of its future. Nostalgia may keep people visiting Folkestone for now, but as this is rooted in a disappointment that Folkestone is not what it was, this is unsustainable. The IPA study has demonstrated that by creating a new vision for Folkestone’s future, among the underused infrastructure of tourism, this nostalgia could transform to a fondness of Folkestone’s past but also a contented future.

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The subsequent masterplan for Folkestone proposes that the abundance of hotels be given special planning rights for automatic change of use into dementia care homes. The larger, grand seaside hotels will become major dementia care facilities, which share knowledge and resources with the smaller, former hotel and bed and breakfast sites. The same housing provision as in De Haan’s masterplan is allocated to the seafront, but in a more linear formation, framing the recently reclaimed beach and facing the edge. Taking into account the findings from the IPA study, this is better designed for the elderly, taking into account both their needs and the aspects of Folkestone that are important to them. The beach can then remain vast and spacious, celebrating the more unwieldy nature of the edge condition and

seeking to not encroach on the liminal space. This masterplan was formed to cater to the elderly population, which is why an in-depth analysis of their views was necessary. It was identified that the liminal aspect of Folkestone’s character was very important to this group, more so than its previous identity as a tourism resort. Therefore, the masterplan seeks to celebrate this, while also providing a new infrastructure for dementia care that is increasingly needed in Folkestone (Alzheimer’s Research UK, 2015).

Discussion

Masterplan

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MASTERPLAN

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Figure 38: A masterplan for Folkestone, highlighting proposed housing on the seafront, possible care home sites in smaller hotels and three larger dementia care facilities in former grand seaside hotels

This masterplan intends to celebrate the enchanting nature of Folkestone as a town on the edge, the captivating state of being by the sea and the sense of freedom that this can inspire in the observer. It is rooted in the state of becoming that Folkestone was founded upon and while not turning away from the townâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s former glory, the masterplan seeks to celebrate Folkestone as a place that has always been in flux.

Ellen Peirson

In recognition of the increase of dementia cases in the seaside, produced by an ever-ageing population, the masterplan offers an alternative model for dementia care in the shell of the former grand seaside hotels in Folkestone. It is

proposed that under-occupied hotels are, either partially or fully, converted to care facilities for medium to acute cases of dementia. Hotels are considered a good candidate due to their diminishing role in Folkestone, and the similarity of their layout to the current care home typology. Using the layout of the Grand Burstin hotel as an example, three hotel rooms can be merged to form two care rooms, with the middle room forming two large en suite bathrooms. The entire ground floor of the hotel is already given over to communal space, some of which is used for traditional seaside entertainment, such as amusement arcade games and a bingo hall.

DISCUSSION

The masterplan seeks to provide the same amount of housing in a more sensitive and applicable way. The beach is retained as a transition zone between the land and sea, from the point of the existing boardwalk. Behind the boardwalk, at the site of the former Rotunda amusements park, will be a public garden which follows the form of the previous site, particularly the two dome buildings that the park centred around.

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Opposing the current plans for Folkestone Harbour, the housing is provided in a much more linear arrangement, stretching down to coast to Sandgate to the south west and across to the East Cliff in the north east. The density of this will be clustered around proposed new links to The Leas in an attempt to traverse the steep incline that has historically acted as a barrier to separate the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;two Folkestonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. The Leas Lift will be reopened and at the bottom of this lift will form a public square. The existing lifts of the Leas Cliff Hall will

also be opened to the public to provide another point of access. Adjacent to both new access points will be two new sets of steps to provide access out of operating hours and to complement the existing Lower Leas Coastal Park pathway; a more accessible route which zig zags up the cliff face. This masterplan has been produced by understanding in-depth the views, needs and wishes of the elderly. As such this has resulted in drastically different plans from the current approved masterplan by ACME which seeks to reinvigorate the tourism industry while attracting new residents from London. Early design responses resulting from this research also sought to return Folkestone to the whimsical image of a seaside resort. The IPA study, when placed in the academic literature and wider popular culture, suggested that this was not appropriate. The result intends to offer a different future for Folkestone to sit alongside its celebrated past.

Figure 39: The Grand Burstin as a dementia care facility

MASTERPLAN

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DISCUSSION

more tha

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Folkestone Dementia Care

Figure 40: Folkestone re-imagined as a specialist resort for dementia care

MASTERPLAN

Greetings from... Th e G r a nd B u r s t in D e m e nti a Ca re Fa cilit y

121 Figure 41: A postcard from the proposed dementia care facility at the Grand Burstin

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Walton, J. K. (2000) The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century, Journal of Social History. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Williams, R. (1960) Border Country. London: Hogarth. Williams, R. (1973) The Country and the City. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Winner, M. (1993) Dirty Weekend. United Kingdom: Universal Studios. Wood, R. (2011) Kent Resorts Hotel Market Fact File. Maidstone: Visit Kent.

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List of Figures

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Figure 1

Folkestone seafront, as seen from the Harbour Arm Author’s Own

Figure 2

Map of the UK, highlighting Folkestone Author’s Own

Figure 3

Sunny Sands Beach as seen from The Stade Author’s Own

Figure 4

Demographics table of interview participants Author’s Own

Figure 5

Richard Woods’ artwork Holiday Home for the 2017 Folkestone Triennial floating in the Folkestone Harbour Author’s Own

Figure 6

View across the enclosed section of Folkestone Harbour Author’s Own

Figure 7

The Harbour Arm on a Friday evening in August 2019 Author’s Own

Figure 8

Rail links between London, Folkestone and Europe Author’s Own

Figure 9

Folkestone Harbour Station, recently refurbished as a public garden and walkway Author’s Own The newly restored Harbour Arm, reopened in 2016 as a promenade and food, drink and entertainment venue Author’s Own

Figure 11

Folkestone Harbour Station in 1997 Source: Brooksbank, B. (1997) Folkestone Harbour Railway Station, Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkestone_Harbour_railway_ station (Accessed: 21 January 2020).

Figure 12

Folkestone Harbour Station in 2019 Author’s Own

Figure 13

Former ferry and rail networks at the Harbour Arm Author’s Own

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Figure 10

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Figure 14

Sunny Sands beach, as seen from the Harbour Arm Author’s Own

Figure 15

Folkestone’s clifftop promenade, The Leas Author’s Own

Figure 16

Map showing the separation between The Leas and the seafront, and the cliff which acts as a physical barrier dividing the two Author’s Own

Figure 17

Sunny Sands beach at high tide Author’s Own

Figure 18

The new boardwalk from the harbour towards the Lower Leas Coastal Park, as seen from The Leas Author’s Own

Figure 19

The approved seafront development, design by ACME, on behalf of the Roger De Haan Source: KM Group (2018) Plans for Folkestone Harbour homes go on public display, KentOnline. Available at: https://www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/ news/massive-seafront-homes-plan-on-show-190454/ (Accessed: 13 January 2020).

Figure 20

Seafront-facing buildings on Marine Parade Author’s Own

Figure 21

Three maps showing the evolution of Folkestone beach into an amusements park and back again Sources:

Wish I Was There

Ordnance Survey County Series (1908), Landmark Information Group, Using: EDINA Historic Digimap Service, <http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/>, Created: September 2019 Ordnance Survey County Series (1938), Landmark Information Group, Using: EDINA Historic Digimap Service, <http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/>, Created: September 2019 Ordnance Survey County Series (2019), Landmark Information Group, Using: EDINA Digimap Ordnance Survey Service, <http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/>, Created: September 2019

Figure 22

The former Rotunda Amusements Park in 2002 Source: Couchman, A. (2018) The changing face of the Folkestone seafront and the ambitious plans that never made it, KentLive. Available at: https:// www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/folkestone-seafront-plans-neverhappened-529857 (Accessed: 15 January 2020).

Figure 23

Entertainment area in The Grand Burstin Author’s Own

Figure 24

Lighthouse Champagne Bar on the Harbour Arm Author’s Own

Figure 25 and 26

Stills from the 1948 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock Source: Boulting, J. (1948) Brighton Rock. United Kingdom: Associated British Picture Corporation.

Figure 27 and 28

Stills from Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2000 film Last Resort Source: Pawlikowski, P. (2000) Last Resort. United Kingdom: BBC.

Figure 29 and 30

Stills 2018 independent film Jellyfish Source: Gardner, J. (2018) Jellyfish. United Kingdom: Front Row Filmed Entertainment. Castle Dracula in the derelict Rotunda Amusements Park on Folkestone beach, 2006 Source: Rowe, M. (2011) Outposts and Borders 2, Flickr. Available at: https:// flic.kr/p/9iF5SM (Accessed: 21 January 2020).

Figure 32

Lubaina Himid’s Jelly Mould Pavilion from the 2017 Folkestone Triennial, on the site of the former Rotunda Amusements Park, 2019 Author’s Own

Figure 33

Tim Etchell’s 2014 Folkestone Triennial artwork Is Why The Place at the Folkestone Harbour Station Author’s Own

Figure 34

Hotel lobby at The Grand Burstin on a Friday evening in August 2019 Author’s Own

Figure 35

The Grand Burstin Author’s Own

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Figure 31

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Figure 36

Folkestone Harbour Arm exit Author’s Own

Figure 37

Folkestone Harbour Station ‘way out’ Author’s Own

Figure 38

A masterplan for Folkestone, highlighting proposed housing on the seafront, possible care home sites in smaller hotels and three larger dementia care facilities in former grand seaside hotels Author’s Own

Figure 39

Folkestone reimagined as a specialist resort for dementia care Author’s Own

Figure 40

The Grand Burstin as a dementia care facility Author’s Own

Figure 41

A postcard from the proposed dementia care facility at the Grand Burstin Author’s Own

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Appendices

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Appendix A: Flyer to recruit interview candidates

Y RY AN A A ND OR G II A D M O M L G M E M L E A NO O SSTTA N H EE SSEE A ASS II D TT H T D EE T A A Did you regularly go to Folkestone on holiday in the 60s, 70s and 80s?

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or Did you grow up in Folkestone during this time? I am an architectural researcher at the University of Cambridge looking to talk to people about their memories and perceptions of Folkestone. If you can answer yes to either of the above questions, I would be really grateful if you would be happy to be interviewed about your experiences. If you are happy to be interviewed, or for more information, please contact me at erwp3@cam.ac.uk or 07902089527.

Ellen Peirson

Ellen Peirson, Cambridge Design Research Studio

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Appendix B: Interview questions for participants who visited Folkestone as a child

1. 2. 3. 4.

Why Folkestone? Why did you start visiting Folkestone? Did you visit other seaside resorts, before or after? Do you still visit Folkestone? How did you travel to Folkestone?

5. 6. 7.

Holidays What did you do during your visits? Who did you visit with? Which places/spaces do you remember? Which do you miss?

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English Seaside How would you define the character of an English seaside resort? a. Are resorts distinctive? Or general? 9. How important is the sea to you at the seaside? 10. What types of places do you like to spend your time in at the seaside? a. Amusements arcades b. Beach c. Cafes d. Bars e. Piers f. Hotels g. Promenades 8.

Future How has Folkestone changed since you started visiting? How did you feel about Folkestone at the time of your visits? How do you feel about Folkestone now? What is special or different about Folkestone, in relation to other seaside resorts? a. What is the same? 15. What changes would you like to see in Folkestone?

11. 12. 13. 14.

Concluding 16. Is there anything else regarding Folkestone, or the English seaside more generally, that you would like to discuss? 17. Have you considered the things discussed previously before now?

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Appendix C: Interview questions for participants who grew up in Folkestone

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Growing up in Folkestone What was it like growing up in Folkestone? Did you notice many tourists? What did you do in Folkestone at weekends and in school holidays? Where did you go on holiday? English Seaside How would you define the character of an English seaside resort? a. Are resorts distinctive? Or general? How important is the sea to you at the seaside? What types of places do you like to spend your time in at the seaside? a. Amusements arcades b. Beach c. Cafes d. Bars e. Piers f. Hotels g. Promenades

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Future How has Folkestone changed since you lived there? How did you feel about Folkestone during your childhood? How do you feel about Folkestone now? What is special or different about Folkestone, in relation to other seaside resorts? a. What is the same? 12. What changes would you like to see in Folkestone?

8. 9. 10. 11.

Concluding 13. Is there anything else regarding Folkestone, or the English seaside more generally, that you would like to discuss? 14. Have you considered the things discussed previously before now?

Ellen Peirson