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5 Aug 2013

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside…or perhaps not

A gallery of images of some of Britain’s seaside towns – once glorious, now just ‘dumping grounds’ for the poor, according to one report.

Doing washing in Atmeh, Syria. Assad has sent us back to the middle ages, they say.

Another family arrives, this time escaping bombardment at Arad Nassan.

Mud, filth and washing.

Camp dispensary tent – there are inadequate supplies for 13,000 people here.

The olive groves around the tents are also the latrines for thousands.

Life in a camp with no sewerage or drainage.

Kitchen for family of 12.

Home for the Awid family from Idlib – mum, dad, five sons and five daughters.

Olive harvest must go on in midst of refugee camp.

A good drying day after recent storms.

Holidaymakers stroll down the promenade in Rhyl, north Wales, in 1939.

Rhyl was once a premier seaside resort – but it has suffered in the era of cheap flights abroad and is now one of a handful of seaside towns described as ‘dumping grounds’ for the poor.

Competitors in the wheelbarrow race head towards the finish line on the sands at Margate, Kent, in 1935.

The race in Margate now is to prevent the town from falling further into disrepair.

As in many of the seaside resorts singled out in the Centre for Social Justice report, there is some hope – the Turner Contemporary gallery opened here in 2011.

Jaywick Sands, near Clacton, was a popular holiday destination in the 1930s – at the same time as ‘calisthenics’, a form of exercise, was also in vogue.

Old seaside postcards like this hark back to an age when most people’s dream holiday stretched only to a patch of sand to briefly call their own, an ice-cream and a nice pint in the (usually) drizzle.

Clacton might not be as popular nowadays – but some of the old seaside traditions, like getting a donut on the pier, remain despite the wider socioeconomic problems of the UK’s beach towns.

A couple relax in their deckchairs on the beach at Great Yarmouth, all the way back in 1913.

But it wasn’t all joy and laughter in the olden days, as Tony Ray-Jones shows in this funny, but also strangely sad, snap of Great Yarmouth.

As if Great Yarmouth needed any more problems – it was on the campaign trail for politicians in the 2010 election.

Arguably the king of Britain’s seaside resorts back in the day, this shot shows the crowds that used to descend on Blackpool in the 1930s.

This bleak picture shows the former Pontins Holiday Camp in Blackpool, earmarked for demolition last year.

While Britain’s resorts do have problems, it’s not all doom and gloom. Some attractions, like Blackpool Tower Ballroom, are as popular as ever – and who knows what the future may hold for our gritty, but often glorious, seaside towns.