CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON examines the reasons why so many seaside properties are brightly coloured, and picks out a few of his favourites
The small coastal cottage or large seafront terrace painted in a palette of pastel (or sometimes not so pastel) shades is an increasingly common sight in British holiday resorts and harbours. On a sunny summer’s day they’re a colourful seaside honeypot for tourists.
When these historic dwellings were built their exterior appearance would have been that of natural stone, possibly with a later render or whitewash coating to improve its weatherproofing. The white seaside cottage became a ubiquitous feature of our coastline, but at some unknown point a trend started to paint them in colours other than white.
Exactly why and when this trend started is a bit of a mystery, but it’s likely to date back to Georgian or Victorian times, or possibly even earlier, when a white ‘lime wash’ was applied to exterior walls of new houses. This improved weatherproofing in exposed sites and also hid the variable quality of the stonework beneath. The white wall would also reflect the sun’s rays and was said to keep the temperature inside in summer a little cooler.
Then someone, somewhere then realised that adding the local dried clay to the lime wash produced colours other than white. If you are going to make the effort to paint the exterior of your house every year, then why not paint it a different colour? Depending on the local clay/soil type, this would produce ‘earth’ colours such as orange, pink, brown, yellow, cream or grey which gave the property owners a little individuality in a sea of white.
This is probably the source of the widely quoted belief that local fishermen used to paint their houses in different colours to make them recognisable from a distance as they returned to harbour. This story has its roots in an era now sadly long gone, when every small harbour would be full of fishing boats, and their owners would live in the surrounding houses. To be able to pick out your own house as you returned home in a stormy sea or fading light would do much to raise the spirits.
And so it all began, the ‘Great British repaint’ of our coastal cottages and houses. Why do we still do it? That’s a much easier question to answer – tourism. There’s no need for fishermen to be able to recognise their house any more – because there are so few fishermen. Their harbours are filled with yachts, and various other pleasure craft, and their former houses are now colourful and attractive second homes or holiday rental cottages. For most coastal towns and villages today the main ‘industry’ is tourism, an
