Downstream

champions.
Its reputation as a resort
began in Georgian times, and
its beaches and good rail links
with London led to an influx
of summer visitors. In
Victorian times Southend was
mocked by comic writers for
its ‘cockneyism and
vulgarity’, but it was a clean,
quiet town according to
Dickens’s Dictionary of the
Thames, the air fresh and
invigorating, ‘a well-built,