The English seaside town holds a particular place in the soul of the nation. Many of us will remember childhood holidays by the seaside. Older people may spend their retirement years in coastal towns. Towns by the sea can be colourful destinations with a unique aesthetic. Philip Larkin, the great English poet, encapsulated this aesthetic as ‘the miniature gaiety of seasides’ in the poem To the Sea.
But confrontations between nature and structure are being fought more ferociously with each passing year on the English coastline. This image shows a section of the sea defenses at Dawlish in Devon. The walls, ramparts, steps, handrails, promenades and railway line are regularly battered by winter storms, and then rebuilt as a defense against the otherness and destructive power of the sea. It’s becoming a Sisyphean task, pitching human ingenuity and resources against the overwhelming power of the ocean.
This view out to sea, into the English Channel, is framed by the severe architecture of seaside defenses. It was made a few weeks ago, on a humid summer’s day. The sea looks benign, calm, passive, contained. But my vantage point would have been flooded by thundering sea water during Storm Ingrid in January of this year. Parts of the sea wall were washed away, the railway line closed, the town shut down.
To my eyes, the photograph seems to hold a sense of foreboding, despite the placid appearance of the sea. The walls, ramparts, steps, handrails, promenades and railway line, however strongly they are built and rebuilt, are only temporary defenses against the otherness of the sea. They are a testament to our fragile ability to tame something that is far greater than we will ever be.
In the third stanza of Going, Going, Larkin warns:
Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
– But what do I feel now? Doubt?
Or age, simply?
To the Sea is the first poem in Larkin’s 1974 book High Windows. Going, Going is from the same volume.
The image was recorded with a Samsung Digimax L85 compact camera.
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David on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
Foreboding, I agree. History. Walls. War. A sense of time piercing the calm sea, battered rampants evoked, thus present, though absent.
David on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
David on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
Ed on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
https://www.staplefordgranary.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions-overview/larkin-s-photography
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
Comment posted: 26/07/2026
Walter Reumkens on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
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jem on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
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David Pauley on A Defence Against Otherness – A One Shot Story
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