Little Big Ideas By The Sea

2026 marks Scarborough 400, four hundred years since Thomasin Farrer's 1626 discovery of mineral springs beneath the cliffs turned Scarborough into Britain's first seaside resort. Little Big Ideas By The Sea, at St Mary's Church on Saturday 19 September, picks up that story with an afternoon of three short, sharp talks on Scarborough's history, from Georgian spa culture to Victorian photography to a live archaeological dig on the town's doorstep.Across three talks between 3pm and 6pm: historian Allan Brodie PhD uncovers the spa culture, sea-bathing and social mischief of 1730s Scarborough, just a century on from the spa discovery Scarborough 400 celebrates; Jonathan Wallis and Martha Cattell of PhotoScarborough reveal how the town's Victorian photographers made, and sometimes lost a living; and John Oxley brings news from the Scarborough Big Dig, itself part of the Scarborough 400 programme, with finds from five seasons of excavation at Paradise on display.
A relaxed, low-cost way to spend a Saturday afternoon by the sea, and part of Scarborough's 400th anniversary celebrations. Stay for one talk or all three.Tickets 5, covering the whole afternoon. Book in advance at ticketsource.co.uk/bibts.
Tickets available on the door. Refreshments available from 230pm.
Doors open at 230pm.3.00pm Scarborough in the 1730s: Spa, Sea and Sex Dr Allan BrodieBy the early 18th century, a distinctive leisure culture was emerging across Britain, and a fashion for visiting spa towns was a major part of it. Scarborough was a place of health and mirth, where the health-giving properties of its spa waters competed with a busy social life and where sea bathing was just beginning to catch on as an additional treatment.
Scarborough sits at the centre of the story of how spa-town manners and routines were carried over to the seaside resort. Evidence for the earliest days of sea bathing, in the early 18th century, is thin everywhere except here, where an unusually rich vein of material survives.
This talk looks at the role of spas and Scarborough in particular in the pursuit of better health; at how sea bathing grew to rival, and eventually eclipse, the town's mineral waters; at how a small town coped with an influx of visitors; and at the mark those visitors left on the tone of the town. A distinct streak of licentiousness in the literature of the period hints at a more relaxed attitude to sex that was starting to take hold.Allan Brodie is a historian and architectural historian who has worked for Historic England (and its predecessor bodies) since 1986 and is now a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University. For the past 25 years he has studied the history of tourism, and is the author of several books on the subject, including England's Seaside Resorts (2007), Travel and Tourism in Britain, 17001914 (2014), The Seafront (2018), Tourism and the Changing Face of the British Isles (2019) and England's Seaside Heritage from the Air (2021), alongside studies of individual resorts such as Margate, Weymouth, Blackpool and Weston-super-Mare. He also has long-standing interests in the history of the Isles of Scilly and in military history. Allans England's Military Heritage from the Air appeared in 2024, and his latest book, England's Lost Travel Heritage from the Air, in 2025. Allan is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society.4.00pm And in the Season Scarborough: The Economics of Victorian Seaside Photographic Studios
Jonathan Wallis and Martha Cattell (PhotoScarborough)The rise of photography in the 1850s brought a wave of new photographers to seaside towns like Scarborough. Rushed off their feet in the summer season, with work drying up over winter. How did those photographers make it through the lean months? The answer, for some of them, is that they didn't.Jonathan Wallis and Martha Cattell of PhotoScarborough explore the ups and downs of some of Scarborough's Victorian photographers, with a chance afterwards to see items from the PhotoScarborough archive including two of the studio portraits used in this event's publicity: one from the studio of George Simpson Haigh (probably mid-1860s), and one from the studio of Edwin Avison, who set up on his own in Scarborough in the 1890s.Jonathan and Martha are the creators of PhotoScarborough, a project researching the history of photography and photographers in Scarborough. Find out more at photoscarborough.org.uk.5.00pm Ah, Paradise! The Scarborough Big Dig, 2022 to 2026. John OxleyAn update from the Scarborough Big Dig, the archaeological excavation on the green space at Paradise in Scarborough Old Town, now in its fifth season. The dig is exploring the site's medieval and post-medieval garden and horticultural history and looking for evidence of what came before it.This talk covers what's been found since 2022, the ongoing post-excavation work, and plans for publication and archiving the material recovered with a chance to see finds from five years of work at Paradise.