GOOD FROM EVIL

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 881, 6 December 1916, Page 6

GOOD FROM EVIL

SHELLED SCARBOROUGH. EXAMPLE IN SEASIDE CIVICS. A delightful article in the "New Statesman"' by "Lens" tells how, though "Scarborough has had a cruel and well-nigh ruinous experience,*' its civic authorities have gone ahead and will be rewarded. "Let them now do as much for infant mortality in their East Ward as they have done for public health

along the shore. After the war Russian and other visi'ors, commended to Harrogate, where rank and fashion have lately been sipping the waters and playing bridge—because there is nothing whatever else to do

would be wise to acquaint themselves with the most admirably treated seaside resort I know, where bathing is as comfortable as off the Lido near Venice, to say nothing of Ostcnd or Schcveningen, and vastly more salubrious, and where an example in seaside civics and holiday hygiene has been set that should be everywhere known and followed."

What Scarborough Has Done. "South of the Spa observe how the actual edge of the land has been treated. Greek columns and colonnades have been built for the shelter of bathers, and beyond them the cliff has been carefully protected by building into it pieces of stone of the same colour and substance as the cliff itself. The encroachments of the sea have been resisted successfully for half a mile or more, but even a few yards away from the cliff all looks natural—the red-grey stone giving a warm colour that is artistically right at every point. "Promenades and steps to and from the sand are all paved with a composition also of this colour, and the walks and steps are bounded with this stone, the walls being crowned with irregular pieces high enough for protection but entirely harmonious with the natural cliff. In colour, texture, substance, art and nature are here one. Anyone who knows only the usual seaside promenade, iron railings and all, should see this to discover what can be done when taste and labour are allied. "Above and behind these walks the cliff is largely covered with trees. A few buildings have been introduced, ol reddish stone harmonious with the cliff, and excellent examples of our modern English domestic architecture, in which we have given a long lead to the world during the present century, and of examples of which Scarborough has no end, presumably as the beautiful correlative of the productive hideourness of Leeds and Bradford.

"Now follow any path down the cliff, and you come to the new bathing-pool, or Temple of Hygeia, which has just completed its first season. Sea-bathing is not only a delight, but a tonic and restorative of very high therapeutic value, especially when combined with swimming.

A Fine Bathing Pool

"Hitherto, at Scarborough, you might be forbidden to bathe for days together, owing to the roughness of the sea. The civic authorities have now built a pool. Hie largest in the kingdom (116 by (i" yards), with a sloping sandy floor, bounded by stone-work harmonious with the cliff and already covered with seaweed. The water is changed by every night tide. The pool is approached from bathing boxes, hot spray, etc., disposed under -a curved colonnade which, when seen from the sea, at once recalls Greek temples by the sea that one has seen unearthed in Italy. It is to be hoped that the cafe and bandstand to come may be designed by the same admirable hand.

"To this place both sexes, of nearly all ages, have thronged in the past season. As many as a thousand have bathed and swum there in one day. The bathing, of course, is mixed, and most popular of all on Sunday mornings, when crowds assemble to watch it, to the much decadence of Church Parade. But this is. of course, another of the churches of the future/'