Weston-Super-Mare Through Time

Until the railways arrived, Weston-super-Mare was a town without a history. Weston grew into a major seaside resort from a little fishing village with just a handful of houses in under one hundred years. After a period of decline, it has sucessfully recreated itself as a holiday destination for the twenty-first century and as one of Somerset's major towns.

Iron-Age settlers, Romans, seventeenth-century smugglers, John Cleese (television comedian and top-selling writer of Monty Python fame), actors and even the wireless pioneer Gugliemo Marconi play a part in the story of Weston's past. A walk along the town's seafront demonstrates the amazing diversity of the town, encompassing Victorian enterprise, Edwardian splendour, the commercial endeavour of the new-Elizabethans and the remarkable flood defences of the twenty-first century. This edition of Weston-super-Mare Through Time is fully updated.