Sense of place at a British coastal resort: Exploring ‘seasideness’ in Morecambe

This paper considers the tourist’s sense of place as experienced at Morecambe, Lancashire; it is concerned with emotional connections and reactions to place. This struggling traditional British seaside resort has seen the ebb and flow of visitors over the years and more recently regeneration. The qualitative research that underpins this paper consisted interviews with 55-74 year old repeat visitors from the North of England, reflecting the resort’s visitor demographics. This paper therefore reflects a perspective rather than the views of a wider population. The interviews reveal the important role of the sea and seascape to these visitors, this coastal environment lies at the heart of their sense of place. It facilitated a distinctive experience which centred around the inter-related themes of nostalgia, wellness and spirituality. Exposure to the open space of the seafront allowed a connection to something more substantial and enduring than themselves; this was considered thought provoking, uplifting and even spiritual. The respondents valued their seaside visits and percieved them as enjoyable, beneficial and a part of their identity. The tradition of seaside visits was part of their childhood, family narrative and something to be shared with children and grandchildren now and into the future. Their attachment to Morecambe fed into a positive sense of place, referred to here as seasideness, which relied on the distinctive socio-cultural and physical elements of the resort

Sense of place at a British coastal resort: Exploring ‘seasideness’ in Morecambe

This paper considers the tourist’s sense of place as experienced at Morecambe, Lancashire; it is concerned with emotional connections and reactions to place. This struggling traditional British seaside resort has seen the ebb and flow of visitors over the years and more recently regeneration. The qualitative research that underpins this paper consisted interviews with 55-74 year old repeat visitors from the North of England, reflecting the resort’s visitor demographics. This paper therefore reflects a perspective rather than the views of a wider population. The interviews reveal the important role of the sea and seascape to these visitors, this coastal environment lies at the heart of their sense of place. It facilitated a distinctive experience which centred around the inter-related themes of nostalgia, wellness and spirituality. Exposure to the open space of the seafront allowed a connection to something more substantial and enduring than themselves; this was considered thought provoking, uplifting and even spiritual. The respondents valued their seaside visits and percieved them as enjoyable, beneficial and a part of their identity. The tradition of seaside visits was part of their childhood, family narrative and something to be shared with children and grandchildren now and into the future. Their attachment to Morecambe fed into a positive sense of place, referred to here as seasideness, which relied on the distinctive socio-cultural and physical elements of the resort

An exploration of webcam-travel: connecting to place and nature through webcams during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown of 2020, freedom to travel was restricted but there was a remarkable increase in webcam-travel, which can be defined as visiting place-based webcams online. Media commentators suggested that this technology was being used to connect with places and nature; an observation mirrored by webcam hosting organisations. This study examines the surge in popularity of these webcams which reflect a wide range of sites – often natural environments. It goes on to explore the attributes of webcam-travel to explain its rise during lockdown, primarily by employing an online questionnaire. It reveals that this experience is marked by feelings of freedom, nostalgia, and connection – each of which offers potential wellness benefits. Respondents exercised their freedom through these virtual portals to connect to nature, the outdoors, and places that they associated with happy memories pre-lockdown. This article also suggests that webcam-travel links to an increased likelihood to physically visit these sites in the future. Therefore, this research may be relevant to both academics and practitioners with an interest in the experience economy

A socio-cultural analysis of the traditional seaside resort and its contemporary meaning to tourists with specific reference to Morecambe, U.K.

The original contribution of this thesis to knowledge is the concept of seasideness. That is, this thesis presents an in-depth exploration and analysis of the contemporary sense of place at a traditional British seaside resort. Due to the research focussing on issues of place, the study has been framed within human geography. Coastal resorts were amongst the earliest and remain the most important tourism destinations in Britain. However, many medium-sized traditional seaside resorts have in recent decades faced a number of significant challenges, not least Morecambe, a resort located on the Lancashire coast in north-west England. Indeed, few resorts have suffered a greater loss in terms of infrastructure, visitor numbers and reputation than Morecambe. Nevertheless, the resort has benefitted recently from a new promenade adorned with statues and a restored art deco hotel, and has staged a modest recovery from the lows of the late-twentieth century. In the context of its turbulent history, this study considers present day tourists’ experience of Morecambe, a place that has been on the margins for some time. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to establish if a seaside-specific sense of place exists for these visitors and, indeed, for visitors to the seaside more generally. Following a review of the ‘rise and fall’ of the British seaside resort and specifically Morecambe, the thesis explores the factors that may contribute to a sense of place at the seaside, in so doing establishing a conceptual framework for the subsequent research which deliberately employs a mixed methods approach. Firstly, a questionnaire survey amongst visitors to Morecambe establishes a foundation for identifying and understanding touristic behaviour and views. Building on these results, the second stage of the research comprises in-depth interviews with a small purposive sample of older Northern visitors –the largest market as identified at the first stage. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is employed to offer a rigorous and systematic analysis of these interviews. This approach aims to represent a perspective rather than a population and is considered an appropriate method to understand the visitor experience of place and to generate theory. This thesis reveals how space, specifically blue space, informs the touristic reaction to place through a variety of perceived characteristics. Most of these reactions can be grouped into the broad themes of identity, wellness, spirituality and nostalgia for childhood. A seasideness model is proposed which clarifies these inter-related findings. Taken together, these themes and findings paint a picture of a place which holds significant meaning for these visitors. First and foremost, this ‘place’ is the seaside, rather than Morecambe specifically; that is, people visit Morecambe for the natural coastal environment and the enduring socio-cultural construction that is the British Seaside. The thesis concludes by exploring the implications of this research for the future of Morecambe and, implicitly, other resorts

Seasideness: Sense of Place at a Seaside Resort

British seaside resorts are associated with the birth of mass tourism and are amongst the most significant leisure spaces since industrialization. Despite sliding down the expanding leisure ‘consumption spaces hierarchy’ within the later decades of the 20th century (Urry 1997:104), they are still significant leisure resources and are a durable element of British culture (Tunstall and Penning-Rowsell, 1998). Whilst the British seaside is often associated with decline, Walton (2000) suggests that observers should instead try to explain its survival. With this in mind, it is perhaps surprising that the motivation of modern day seaside visitors has not attracted more attention from academics. Indeed Tunstall and Penning-Rowsell (1998:331) call for further qualitative research in this area to, ‘deepen our understanding of individuals’ lifelong experiences of coasts, and the meanings they attach to them’

Wrongful Life Recognized in Washington: Harbeson v. Parke-Davis

Wrongful Lif

Estates, Trusts, and Wills

Estates, Trusts, and Will

Geometric properties of crystal lattices in spaces of arbitrary dimension

The main theme of this thesis (excepting Chapter 5) is to investigate properties of crystal lattices which are of particular significance in higher dimensions i.e. > 3, but which barely show up in low dimensions. We study lattices T and pairs (H,T), where H is a finite subgroup of the orthogonal group acting on T. In Chapter 1 we present some basic properties of lattices which are used throughout. In Chapter 2 we discuss crystal families and prove that the Face Theorem of [12] can be extended to these. In Chapter 3 we investigate the decomposability properties of the RH-module V and the QH-module QT and the relationship between them. We introduce the ideas of typically orthogonal decompositions and inclined point groups. We prove some general criteria for determining these. In Chapter 4 we extend the decomposability study to families and show how our work can be used to describe some higher dimensional families which we consider to be of particular significance. Specific results are given. In particular, we reduce the problem of describing the descendants of one, two and three dimensional families to a problem involving only the partition function. In Chapter 5 we formulate and study an approach to the problem of the stability of symmetry in lattice hyperplanes. The full solution corresponding to this formulation is given in 3 dimensions. We venture to hope that this solution might be of some interest to practising crystallographers, possibly in the study of twinned crystals with rational twinning planes

‘We had the most wonderful times’: seaside nostalgia at a British resort

Morecambe is a traditional British seaside resort that experienced a dynamic ebb and flow of visitors. It still attracts visitors, many of whom are from the North of England and in the second half of their lives. The experiences of such traditional seaside markets have not been examined as carefully by academics in recent years as one might assume. All too often this subject falls between the gap between serious academic study and popular culture, which supports narratives focussing on the apparent decline of an idealised seaside. Instead this paper attempts to gain an understanding of this seaside experience, and is based around ten semi-structured interviews with 55-74 year old repeat North of England visitors to Morecambe. It considers their nostalgic connection and reaction to the resort, which emerged as a significant element of visitor experience. The seaside is considered timeless by these visitors and facilitates a reverie through which one can temporarily revisit a past which is populated by childhood memories of family members. The resort allows visitors to fleetingly transcend time, through immersion in the unchanging resort with its timeless seacape. This reconnection with the past highlights a dissatisfaction with the present which hinges on the loss of childhood. Yet nostalgia also allowed for a positive re-telling of the past which underpinned family narratives and contributed to the cross-generational appeal of the beach

The development and decline of Morecambe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a resort caught in the tide

Mass tourism started late and declined early in Morecambe, Lancashire. The seaside resort developed in the late nineteenth century, tourism soared in the early twentieth century and peaked in the inter-war and post-war years. However, by the 1970s Morecambe was nicknamed The Costa Geriatrica – where seagulls don’t land anymore. It had become the unfashionable subject of jokes on national television. This transformation in reputation and fortune was rapid; the trend since the mid-twentieth century was one of decline. Most attractions struggled to survive past the mid-1970s and the 1980s were a low point. The visitor numbers had fallen away; few resorts have experienced such a pronounced boom and bust. This article will consider the various micro and macro factors which contributed to Morecambe’s unusually turbulent history as a mass tourism destination. In doing so it reveals that many of the acutest challenges facing the resort were resort specific or regional and not limited to the second half of the twentieth century – the period most often associated with the decline of traditional British seaside resorts. This account of the failure of mass tourism provides an important historical context, as the resort considers its future and attempts regeneration