ABSTRACT
British seaside resorts present particularly difficult problems as regards the ‘heritage of the recent past’. In the first place, their experience and circumstances raise contentious questions under the headings both of ‘recent’ and of ‘heritage’. Secondly, their current economic difficulties, and problematic relationship with central Government, add further dimensions to the question of what is to be done to regenerate these places, which are peripheral by definition but owe their existence and identity as resort destinations and residential areas to external demand for what they have to offer, if not from the metropolis then from regional cities and their satellite towns. Thirdly, proposals for regeneration are sometimes threatening in themselves to the identities of such towns as seaside resorts, to components of their ‘heritage’ in that guise, and especially to those aspects of the ‘heritage of the recent past’ that are not obviously iconic in the manner of Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion or Morecambe’s Midland Hotel. 1
