The Steady Path to Abstraction
It may not be as obscure as Donegal’s Murder Hole Beach but Cooden Beach is certainly lower profile than its better known Sussex coast neighbours Bexhill-on-Sea and Eastbourne. The Cooden Beach Hotel, a half timbered Tudoresque pile on a butterfly plan with wings, takes pride of place along the seafront. Set back on a grass bank also overlooking the shale beach is a row of white painted timber beach huts. Some have names: “Seagulls”; “Shanti”; “Tilly”. Quintessential English seaside. On a late spring day, Cooden Beach is as defined as a Mondrian, displaying tripartite horizontality under an endless sky.
