From Southwold to Lowestoft: how two resorts drifted apart

The seaside is the national playground for our deepest, insular selves and also, perhaps, a simple expression of the democratic ideal. The English celebrate the castles of their homes, but we are also drawn to the littoral.

The beach is where we defend our freedoms and where, on a fine afternoon, with a kite or a surfboard, we can play truant from everyday life. It is also the place where, in contemplation of the infinite, the flux and reflux of ceaseless tides, ordinary island dwellers can renew their identity. Hardier souls can also get refreshed in the icy water.

Perhaps that’s why, last week on Southwold pier, a “sandwich war” erupted after some visitors were prevented from eating their packed lunch (cheese and pickle). More outrageous still, according to the local paper, “two pensioners were banned from eating slices of Victoria sponge cake from their Tupperware box.”

According to Steven Dodd, who was visiting Southwold with his young family: “We went for a day by the seaside, walked up the pier and sat on the benches in the middle.” Dodd was feeding his daughters their sandwiches when “this guy said, ‘Sorry, there’s no picnic on the pier’, and I had to put them away, or he would call the management.”

“It was like the fun police were out,” Dodd said. “It made me really quite angry.” But he fought back through social media, defiantly posting a picture of his packed lunch.

In Southwold, there’s been conflict on the shore since the Saxons, who were known for their lunch boxes, first invaded, and gave the town its name.

East Anglia remains as English as warm beer, and Southwold is the home of Adnams ale. Part of its appeal as a holiday destination lies in its evocation of a lost Englishness: crazy golf, tea rooms, parish churches, and the kind of tranquil emptiness that makes you wonder if there’s about to be an air raid.

This coast has attracted generations of writers and artists. Thomas Hardy noted “the sensation of having nothing but the sea between you and the North Pole”. Crabbe, Dickens, Forster, Woolf and WG Sebald all found inspiration in these flatlands. According to his biographer, George Orwell “pursued three women simultaneously” here.

The late PD James drew on the darker side of East Anglia. Artists from Turner and Charles Rennie Mackintosh to Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst have revelled in the big skies, luminous light, and weird landscape. Even on bright days, the sea remains grey or brown.

In an age of angst and recession, Southwold projects a comforting air of resilience and normality. Although you will probably search in vain for a non-white face, it’s also a mirror to our society. Barely 11 miles south of Lowestoft, Southwold also embodies another sign of the times: the cruel juxtaposition of rich and poor, and metropolitan values versus rural deprivation.

“Call it Ham and High-on-Sea”, says cheerful Jane Leonard, a former actress and Rambert-trained dancer. Living here, off and on, since the 1960s , she makes ends meet with guided brewery tours for Adnams, plus sessions of “Make your own gin”, and a bit of B&B on the side.

Southwold, she says, “is expensive. We do have London prices.” And English hang-ups, too. There is, she concedes, “a U and Non-U side of the lighthouse.” U would be living on South Green (Georgian houses; unrestricted views); Non-U is found on the road to the front.

Across the marshes in Walberswick, there is what Leonard calls “Freud-land”, the homes of Emma and Esther Freud, and Clement Freud’s widow, Jill. She reels off some other Southwold celebrities (Richard Curtis, David Morrissey, and the film director Paul Greengrass) but insists that “we give famous people space”, recalling the time when Tim Brooke-Taylor took his children on the beach. For Leonard, there’s a good community here, and she only goes to London “two or three times a year.” Her world is defined by Beccles, Norwich and Saxmundham “which has a Waitrose”.

What about Lowestoft ? “When I was a child,” she remembers, “it was a big treat to play bingo in Lowestoft.” And now ? A shadow crosses her face. “I will only go to Lowestoft when I really have to. I mean, the centre of Lowestoft is so difficult.”

She can say that again. Take the London road into south Lowestoft, passing the Pontins-Pakefield Holiday Park, and then a Homebase. At first, there’s a long esplanade every bit the equal of Southwold’s seafront. This unadvertised approach to the town is a poignant reminder that Lowestoft was once the Brighton of East Anglia, with pump rooms, botanical gardens and bowling greens. When the “new pier” thrust 400 yards into the North Sea, it was said to be the most beautiful on the east coast with a promenade of African mahogany, illuminated by gaslight.

Those days are gone, but the guest houses – Wave Crest, Harbour Lights, Homelea, Fairways and Bon-Ami – linger. On the shore, silvery retirees walk their dogs and watch the kite-surfers skidding across the grey water. Towards the town centre, which is blighted by A12 traffic in unresolved gridlock, there’s a garish fun fair with footloose holidaymakers in anoraks eating ice-cream and dodging the rain.

This Lowestoft seems more Orwell than Sebald, but it is Sebald who nails it. “As I walked into Lowestoft,” he writes in The Rings of Saturn, “it seemed incomprehensible to me that the place could have become so run down, until all that might be said for Lowestoft was that it occupied the easternmost point in the British Isles … In some of the streets almost every other house is up for sale. There is no sign of an end to the encroaching misery.” Despite a rearguard action by the council, the bustle of Lowestoft’s fishing industry has gone. All that’s left is the Bird’s Eye frozen foodfactory.

The Lowestoft Journal presents a bleak picture of petty crime and random violence. After being attacked at a north Lowestoft bus stop, Adele Bellis lost an ear and much of her hair, also suffering “life-changing” scars. She was assaulted by a masked man carrying a Lucozade bottle, a crime that was sponsored by a jealous ex. “I knew it was acid,” she told the court. “I was shouting, ‘I’m burning, I’m burning.’”

Down in Southwold, Jane Leonard, dismayed by such reports, insists crime is not the big issue. What are her concerns? “We want thriving independent businesses” (She was vociferous in Southwold’s losing battle against Costa, which prompted claims of snobbery against the town.) “We want more affordable property. We have to protect our environment. What we must do,” she concludes, with a final sip of cappucino, “is keep the charm.”

Picnics optional.