Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1974

The last few negatives to go through the scanner have been from 1974 and were taken on Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

It's fascinating going through the old negatives for several reasons. One because they show a world that has gone now.

Many of the rides and architecture shown on these photos have disappeared, or were soon to disappear like the round globe on top of the Big Dipper shown here. Others were destined to disappear twenty years later, like the Log Flume.

Access to rides for photographers seemed easier then - before the shops and businesses of Ocean Boulevard were built, there was an open sight line onto the front of the southern half of the park overlooking the Log Flume and Big Dipper.

This was the Tom Sawyer ride - a gentle ride on a raft that followed a pre-determined path on the lake underneath the Log Flume.

What could be more romantic than gliding along between the concrete pillars and getting dripped on whenever you went under the Log Flume track?

The photos are also interesting for the people. The fashions of the day, the fact that so many of the photos are aimed at pretty girls (I was only 20 and single at the time!) and the fact that you can now look back and think "how did people manage before mobile phones, computers, texting, Rubik's Cube...?"

And it's worth thinking about the habits and what more modern habits have cost. The pretty girl behind the counter sells a small bag of popcorn. These days she would hand you a bucket full. But look at the size of most of the people in these photos - and not just the pretty young girls! In 1974 if you wanted a cup of coffee you bought a cup of coffee. Not a mug. Certainly not a pint or more. These days when fast food operators ask "Do you want to go large with that?" they unwittingly are asking the exact correct question. Not "Do you want that to go large?" but "Do you want to go large with that?" It's a strange world.

Many of the rides featured in the photos still exist on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. They date back a long way in fact. The Big Dipper was built in 1924. The Grand National of 1936 was always my personal favourite ride, even after the Big One was built. The Derby Racer, shown here was a simple large-scale carousel, but fast enough that the centrifugal force meant you had to have strength in your knees to stop you flying off the outside horses! I wonder which of the two young gentlemen she favoured... Surely that's one of the Osmonds on the right...? Who??? Yes, alright, I'm getting on in age you know...

And did you know that the Pleasure Beach used to build its own dodgem cars? They had workshops where the cars were designed and moulded out of fibreglass... Dodgems were at first flimsy things. The idea was to dodge other cars, hence the name. The early examples in the 1920s had little or no protection for the rider but the ride changed over time so that the main aim by the 1950s was to continually ram other cars. Happy days.

And none of these people were worrying about what their friends were doing or wanting to phone them - which would have meant finding a public telephone box and hoping they were at home - and were blissfully unaware of what an email was never mind a text.

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