|
I do a silly thing like give the camera a chance to pick our next destination and what happens, Blackpool. Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the towns' greatest fans, it's just that I know he picked it because he'd be safe from facts about Romans and because he knew he could stick me on some terrifying rides! Actually the Romans did come to Blackpool, but took one look at the bogs and the people that lived in them (whom they called Sentanti "Dwellers in a country of water") and they turned and left.
Blackpool is an astonishing place and it owes a great deal of its own particular magic to three men who over one hundred years helped create a whole new way for people of Britain to holiday. Henry Banks was the proprietor of the Lane Ends Hotel, now Lewis's, at the turn of the 19th Century. Banks did so well at this trade that he bought the entire Lands Ends Estate, built holiday cottages on it, and let them at the astonishingly high price of £7 per week, don't forget that was more than most got per year! In 1837 he built Victoria Terrace and Blackpool began to take shape.
The coming of the railways in the 1850's opened up a whole new life to Blackpool, on cheap excursions, visitors flocked to the town to drink its health giving sea water, two glasses a day served at your table, to breath in the fresh air and to bathe in the sea. Bathers were split by sex, men would clear the beach on the sound of a bell, women would then move onto the beach, any man caught peeping at the women would be fined one bottle of wine.
In 1891 Alderman John Bickerstaffe became the Chairman of The Blackpool Tower company. Many thought his idea of building a tower like that of Eiffel to be stupid and doomed to failure. 3 years later, with more than 5 million bricks, 2,500 tons of steel and 93 tons of cast iron, it was standing 518 feet above the town and over 15,000 people visited it in its first week.
At about the same time Mr W G Bean had a dream about building an amusement park where adults could once again play like children, he formed Blackpool Pleasure Beach now one of Britain's success stories. His daughter, Doris Thompson, is still the Chair of the company at the grand age of 92. Up until very recently she, like her mother before her, was always the first to try out a new ride.
St Stephens on the Cliffs was open in 1912 and has as its main claim to fame the 'Actors' Chapel' opened by performers from the Winter Gardens in 1928. Just about every famous act in the country visited this chapel, and many of them are featured in the reredos on the wall, some have even had their ashes placed within the church itself.
Blackpool is of course famous for its trams, and it should be, it was the first town in the country to have an electric street tramway in 1885. At one time it was possible to travel by tram from East Beach Lytham, all the way to Fleetwood, and then take a steamer to the Isle of Man.
|
|
