Sidmouth

Sidmouth’s success, like that of many other English resorts, had much to do with Napoleon Bonaparte. Barred from the Continent and their favoured resorts by the Emperor’s conquest of Europe, the leisured classes were forced to find diversion and entertainment within their own island fortress. At the same time, sea bathing had suddenly become fashionable so these years were a boom time for the south coast, even as far west as Sidmouth, which until then had been a poverty-stricken village dependent on fishing.

Sidmouth’s spectacular position at the mouth of the River Sid, flanked by dramatic red cliffs soaring to over 500 feet and with a broad pebbly beach, assured the village’s popularity with the newcomers. A grand Esplanade was constructed, lined with handsome Georgian houses, and between 1800 and 1820 Sidmouth’s population doubled as the aristocratic and well-to-do built substantial ‘cottages’ in and around the town. Many of these have since been converted into impressive hotels, such as the Beach House, painted strawberry pink and white, and the Royal Glen, which in the early 19th century was the residence of the royal Duke of Kent. The duke came here in 1819 in an attempt to escape his numerous creditors, and it was here that his infant daughter, Princess Victoria, later Queen Victoria, saw the sea for the first time.

To evade his many creditors, the Duke had his mail directed to Salisbury. Each week he would ride there to collect his letters, but in Sidmouth itself he couldn’t conceal his delight in his young daughter. He would push Victoria in a little carriage along the mile-long Regency Esplanade, stopping passers-by to tell them to look carefully at the little girl – “for one day she would be their Queen”. Half a century later, his daughter presented a stained-glass window to Sidmouth parish church in dutiful memory of her father.

One of the town’s early visitors was Jane Austen, who came here on holiday in 1801 and, according to Austen family tradition, fell in love with a clergyman whom she would have married if he had not mysteriously died or disappeared. Later, in the 1830s, William Makepeace Thackeray visited and the town featured as Baymouth in his semi-autobiographical work Pendennis (published in 1848). During the Edwardian age, Beatrix Potter was a visitor on several occasions.

A stroll around the town reveals a wealth of attractive Georgian and early-Victorian buildings. Amazingly for such a small town, Sidmouth boasts nearly 500 listed buildings. Curiously, it was the Victorians who let the town down. Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world at that time, with vast resources at its command, its architects seemed incapable of creating architecturally interesting churches, and the two 19th-century Houses of the Lord they built in Sidmouth display a lamentable lack of inspiration. So ignore them, but it’s worth seeking out the curious structure known as the Old Chancel in Coburg Terrace, a glorious hotch-potch of styles using bits and pieces salvaged from the old parish church and from just about anywhere else, amongst them a priceless window of medieval stained glass.

Also well worth a visit is Sidmouth Museum, near the sea-front, which provides a vivid presentation of the Victorian resort, along with such curiosities as an albatross’s swollen foot once used as a tobacco pouch. There’s also an interesting collection of local prints, a costume gallery and a display of fine lace. One of the most striking exhibits in the museum is the ‘Long Picture’ by Hubert Cornish, which is some eight feet (2.4 metres) long and depicts the whole of Sidmouth seafront as it was around 1814.

The town also boasts one of the few public access observatories in Britain: the Norman Lockyer Observatory. It has a planetarium and large telescopes, and a radio station commemorating the contribution of Sir Ambrose Fleming, a local hero, to the invention of the radio valve. Opening times are limited.

Demure though it remains, Sidmouth undergoes a transformation in the first week of August each year when it plays host to the Sidmouth Folk Week, a cosmopolitan event that attracts a remarkable variety of morris dancers, folk singers and even clog dancers from around the world.