Every coastal village in Britain keeps its history in plain sight, if you know where to look. The church, the harbour wall and the little museum on the seafront are usually within a few hundred yards of each other, and between them they tell a story that runs from drowned fishermen to day-trippers eating ice cream in the rain. Set aside half a day, wear shoes you don't mind getting salty, and start at the top of the village.

Begin in the churchyard

Parish churches in fishing villages are almost always built on the highest ground, partly so the tower could serve as a landmark for boats coming in, and partly because the lower slopes were liable to flood. Walk round to the south side, where the oldest gravestones usually face the sea, and read the inscriptions. You will notice how many are to men in their twenties and thirties, and how many carry the same surnames as the boats still moored in the harbour.

Look out for three things in particular:

• Drowned at sea or lost with all hands on a stone, often with no burial date because no body was recovered.
• Clusters of the same family name in a single row, which usually means a boat went down with brothers or a father and sons aboard.
• Small carved boats, anchors or fish on the headstones — a tradition that flourished in the nineteenth century and reappeared in the twentieth.

Inside, check the walls for brass plaques and wooden boards. Many churches keep a list of men lost from the village, and sometimes a model of a ship or a lifeboat hung near the door as a thank-offering. If the church is locked, the noticeboard outside normally gives a keyholder's details or opening times.

The old harbour wall

The harbour wall is the village's engineering history, and it repays a slow walk along its length. Look at how the stone changes. The oldest section, usually nearest the land, is often rubble or rough blocks held together with lime mortar. Further out you will find larger, neatly cut stones laid in courses — evidence of a Victorian rebuild after a storm breached the original structure.

Find the highest of the storm stones and look for a carved date or a line of paint. Many harbours mark the level reached by a particular flood or gale, and those marks are a good reminder of why the wall was raised and reinforced more than once. On the seaward face, look for iron rings, bollards rubbed shiny by ropes, and the worn patches where nets were hauled and fish landed.

This is also where shipwrecks become local history rather than distant news. Ask at the museum or the pub about the worst night the village remembers. Most harbours on exposed coasts have one: a wreck in which local men rowed out to help and did not come back, or a cargo ship driven ashore whose timbers were still visible at low water within living memory. Low tide is the best time to walk the wall, but check a tide table before you go round the outside of it — the water comes in fast on a shelving beach.

The village museum

These museums are usually volunteer-run, free or a couple of pounds, and open only a few afternoons a week, so check times before you plan your day around one. Don't be put off by the size. A single room can hold the whole economic story of the place.

What to look for:

• Photographs of the fleet at different dates — count the boats and you can see the collapse of the herring or mackerel trade almost year by year.
• Net-making tools, corks, knives and oilskins, often with the name of the family that used them.
• Lifeboat records, including the launches, the medals and the letters of thanks.
• Wreck charts and newspaper cuttings, which usually name the ships and the local men involved.
• Boarding-house registers, railway posters and bathing-machine tickets, marking the moment the village stopped being a working port and started being a resort.

Volunteers are the real asset. Ask a direct question — which families fished here, when did the last boat go out, where was the old slipway — and you will normally get twenty minutes of stories and a recommendation for lunch.

How seaside tourism arrived

The shift from fishing to tourism is written into the streets. Look for the railway station, usually a short walk inland from the harbour, and for the wide promenade built after the trains arrived. Once a day return from the nearest city became affordable, the village gained boarding houses, a pier, a bandstand and rows of shops selling rock and buckets.

You can often date the change by the buildings. Fishermen's cottages sit tightly packed in the oldest lanes behind the harbour, built gable-end to the sea to shrug off the wind. The Victorian villas and terraces stand higher and further back, with bay windows facing the water and names such as Marine View or Sea Lawn. Between them are the chapels, schools and reading rooms that a growing resort needed.

Making a day of it

Aim to arrive early, walk to the church first while the light is on the south wall of the churchyard, then work downhill to the harbour. Time your harbour walk for low tide, and save the museum for the middle of the afternoon, when a shower is most likely and a warm room with a volunteer in it is the best place in the village.

Finish with a walk along the promenade and a look back at the whole village from the far end of the bay. From there you can see the shape of the story at once: the church on the hill, the harbour wall holding back the sea, the old lanes and the newer terraces. It is a fine way to spend a few hours, and it costs almost nothing.