Christina Todosow

Proposal for Research Paper

Professor Schwartz

7 November, 2005

For my research paper, I would like to explore how the development and growth of rail-way travel provided an impetus for sea side resorts and communities.  I will focus on the development of the south and west coast of England and Wales and the impact that rail travel had on developing communities which altered the natural landscape.  The cities that I will pay close attention to, and track development from the mid 19^th century up to the early 20^th century will be:

South:  Brighton, Kent (Herne Bay), Bournemouth, and Dover.

West:  Bath, Holyhead, Blackpool, Southport, Crosby, Swansea and Cardiff areas (Wales).

I will use Winter’s The Environment of Leisure chapter and Simmons’ chapter on Watering-places for general background research on the growth and development of these towns.  I will also research specifically the individual towns in a historical context to identify connections between population growth, commercial development, and natural landscape due to rail way growth.  There will also be a focus placed on the geographic proximity of developing seaside resorts and communities because of their location and accessibility to major industrial centers.  Finally, looking at spatial attributes, I will track population density, terrain, and rail line maps of the area to visually identify and depict changes in population through the decades in order to draw conclusions on the effects that the development of new rail lines had on altering landscapes.   

Some general observations that I have already made are evident in the population density maps from Lab 2.  Due to an increase in rail travel, people moved into previously rural areas to be closer to nature, especially the sea.  One can definitely see the change in population density from 1851 to 1901 by the darkly shaded polygons on the southern coast of England which include the areas of Brighton, Bournemouth, and Dover.  Moreover, the population in places such as Southport, right outside the Liverpool and Manchester areas grew, as noted by Winter, and as depicted by the maps.  These made for nice places to vacation, as they were close and accessible to the neighboring industrial cities.  These areas all grew as sea-side resorts and communities developed for people to escape the industrialized towns up north.  However, because of this, the environmental landscape changed drastically – now that communities were established, there was no need to travel outside the newly established towns, as everything became localized.  The combination of the market drive to bring people to nature as well as the massive increase in people traveling and/or moving was what changed the coastlines which were examples of natural nature prior to their arrival.