Why Did They Knock It Down

A Memory of Ilfracombe.

I remember the last days of the Ilfracombe Hotel. It was a beautiful building but after years of neglect and then under council ownership it fell into disrepair (plus a certain hotelier/councillor didn't like it as it spoilt the view from his hotel) so despite thousands of signatures in protest it was knocked down the year we moved back to Ilfracombe after a year away. I remember seing the remains of the swimming baths as the sea washed into them before it was made into a car park. The hotel was made into…nothing. Just an expanse of shingle with the old concrete railings and posts left leaving some signs of what used to be there. I remember cycling along there and being told off by a council worker on his motor scooter (it's not ok to cycle along there with no one around but it's find if you drive there on a motorised vehicle apparently!). I used to love going to the museum which was the laundry of the hotel. The hotel was huge inside but I don't remember it that well, I just remember that we went to bar and I think some of the hotel was actually council offices. It was a shame when it was knocked down. Even at a young age I thought it was wrong. When I was at school I made a project that took images of Ilfracombe in the early 1980s from the same angle as images I had found in the museum to see how it had changed. I still have the project somewhere (all shot on Ilford Xp1).