The Growth of Cleethorpes - Opinion Divided

As Cleethorpes grew as a resort in the 19th century, there were demands for more improvements to be made and quick about it, but some found the change it brought more welcome than others:“This watering place is now very full of visitors, the number exceeding 700. The trains and packet bring every day additions of highly respectable families who we learn meet with ample accommodation. The present season far surpasses any previous one, and must be a very lucrative affair to the inhabitants generally.”

Lincolnshire, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, July 1849

“A correspondent says “The clumsy and rotten omnibus which takes passengers from Grimsby station to Cleethorpes has broken down twice within a month; it is high time it was burnt and the ladies were no longer put into fits by it. The inhabitants of Cleethorpes as they are the parties benefitting from the number of visitors there, in letting lodgings etc, should club together to procure a proper carriage. The railway proprietors also ought to see that a safe conveyance is used for the purpose. Delicate females are often squeezed up in a single omnibus with a dozen or more.”

Lincolnshire, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, August 1849

“In some respects Cleethorpes is not made the best of by the inhabitants. This may be partly owing to the governing body being merely a sewage authority, and not having the powers of a Local Board of Health. Nature has done much for Cleethorpes, but the people have added to it but a few artificial attractions. The Dolphin is the only decent hotel. The cliff is allowed to crumble away without effort to save it. Artificial walks with pleasant grottoes in the cliffs are unknown. There are a number of seats on the cliff, but not a single gas lamp, and the long stretch of gardens between the cliff and the road reminds the visitor of a piece of uncultivated common with a mixture of cabbage garden, rather than what it should be, an ornamental pleasure garden for visitors. A pier has been projected, but the Act of Parliament empowering a Company to build it will shortly lapse, so that nothing but prompt action can secure this great improvement. Cleethorpes in addition to general salubrity, and the advantage of situation, is capable of affording additional attractions at small cost to the inhabitants. No reasonable outlay should be begrudged in securing these, for, as in other places of a similar character, the increased number of visitors will repay a hundred fold the expenditure.”

Gait’s Directory of Gt Grimsby and Cleethorpes, 1871

“Drunkenness stalked the streets. Men and women, boys and girls, aye children even – ragged and forlorn – were drunken and sickened with drink. One striking feature was the greatly preponderating youthful element of which the visitors were composed, many of whom depended upon the walls and fences for support…Brutalising language and free fights among the youths, bruised features and oaths of intoxicated girls who could not steady themselves from contact with doorways, the sounds proceeding from many of the drinking rooms – this tremendous worship of Bacchus at Cleethorpes on Good Friday – proclaimed the nearest approach to an earthly Pandemonium that I have ever been able to discover. Besides, there were back-room and passage scenes of which delicacy forbids a description, unabashed though were the parties by the presence and entrance of others. One room apparently in use at a public house was guarded by a door keeper as a private apartment, about which there seemed to be, as far as I was concerned, some inexplicable mystery.”

Grimsby Observer, April 1872

“ I went to Cleethorpes for a little sea air; but which I have not had, the wind blowing off land and the shore so crowded with shoals of operatives from the Yorkshire and Lancashire districts, with their wives and children, that I feel excluded from the hubbub. This was, twenty years since, a nice quiet place: now it is a scene of bustle and distraction. Every day, especially Sunday, excursion trains, three and four a day, with loads. But I am, perhaps, the fretful, complaining old man.”

Richard Waldo Sibthorpe (Clergyman), published 1880