In about 1628 Mrs Thomasin Farrer, resident of Scarborough, made an incredible discovery: the town had a beach. Observant folk had previously noticed these distinctive sandy features of a coastal nature, but dismissed them as awful places where ships ran aground and monsters got washed up. They were wastelands.
Thomasin’s genius was to see them differently. Under Scarborough’s South Cliff she had discovered a bubbling spring that allegedly cured many ailments, a conclusion soon backed up by many learned physicians (all with practices in the town, coincidentally). As the venue for this fount of restorative goodness, the beach and sea were obviously health-giving, too.
