Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1979

These photographs were all taken in 1979 but not all on the same day so blue skies may come and go...

Actually most of the photos were taken on black and white film anyway (Ilford FP4 in case anyone is interested) so perhaps I should say light skies may give way to darker skies here and there. The Derby Racer.

I have quite a few articles already on the Pleasure Beach so forgive me if I inadvertantly repeat a photo that I've already used. This shot shows the Cyclone ride - a compact roller coaster of metal construction. At this time the Pleasure Beach south of Watson Road had quite a few of these more portable fairground rides. This had small two-row, four-person cars and wasn't a bad ride at all.

This shot may have already featured I think, but the Astro Liner gets enough comments on the various Blackpool Facebook pages to warrant this being shown again perhaps. It was a simulator ride with a film of space or underwater travel being shown at the front of the seated passengers whilst the tube twisted and lifted or dipped to make the "journey" seem more believable - as if the various space or sea monster attacks weren't enough! Behind it is the station and track of the Steeplechase.

Another portable ride based on the ever-popular Octopus ride. I can't remember what this particular one was called - if you know, leave a comment!

Recently demolished and much lamented, the Wild Mouse was much-loved and one of the few rides where you could expect to be truly terrified as the little mouse car hurtled towards the first extremely tight U-bend.

Woo-hoo! Colour! The Revolution was a brand new ride in 1979. The first looping roller coaster in the UK was catapult launched off a high platform down a dip slope then around the vertical loop, up a second loop/rise to a second platform before repeating the ride backwards. The way up to the starting platform was up a long series of stairs, no lift or ramps. To the disappointment of many riders who came to a sudden realisation that the ride was going to propel them once again around the loop but backwards, there was no exit from the ride on the second platform!

The Revolution's first dip leading to the loop. Under it is the dome of Cinema USA which, whilst it didn't move, was a similar idea to the Astro Liner. In this dome you stood up to watch a film that was filled with motion shots from helicopters, roller coasters, fast boats and a New York fire engine with a long ladder requiring steering at both front and back wheels. The film was projected on the inside of the dome, filling your vision and requiring you to tilt your head up at an angle. All of which made it very difficult to keep your balance as your body tried to make sense of all the movement.

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The Golden Mile in the 1970s

When I came to do the index page for Blackpool's Golden Mile, I was sad to see just how few dedicated posts there were to it. So I'll sort out a few more as we go along! Actually I'll be doing that for most of the index pages and not just the Blackpool ones!

This one was taken in 1975 from the pedestrian bridge over the Promenade. The Golden Mile Centre was the first of the purpose-built large amusement arcades and at the time a section had been taken over by a large exhibition of puppets, props, costumes and models from the many Gerry Anderson TV programmes from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. THey started with Twizzle, Torchy the Battery Boy and Four Feather Falls and then went through all the favourite futuristic series: Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet etc. all the way through to the live action shows, UFO and Space 1999. The rest of the Golden Mile amusement arcades were still inside the old original buildings, hotels and somewhat ramshackle sheds built onto the front of them. They occupied what had been a row of gardens at one time.

As the more unsteady buildings were demolished, small temporary spaces were soon filled with kiddies' rides and roundabouts, until building commenced on the next modern project. This photo was taken in 1976 and a helicopter roundabout, a version of an octopus ride and a full dodgems ride fills the space next to the Golden Mile Centre, extending from the Promenade right back to Bonny Street.

To 1977 and inside the arcades, Fran's brother Bob with our nephew Chris playing a Peppy the Clown puppet game.

Fran herself was into fruit machines. It was around this time they started to get more complicated. With the old ones, you simply pulled the handle and hoped. Then as electronics came along the Hold feature came along, swiftly followed by Nudge and then a whole host of jackpot options until you needed a university degree to understand how to play...

1978 and still not a single video game in sight! Pinball machines (it was an American phrase that was just taking over - during the 1950s and 60s we had called them Pin Tables in the UK) were my favourite coinslot obsession. The best machines would have a queue of people waiting to play. A row of sixpences or shillings lined up along the side rail of the machine would secure your place in the queue.

A glimpse inside the newly opened Coral Island in 1978. With sumptuous carpets and neon lights and a couple of life-size mannikins swinging from trapezes up in the ceiling, it was a step change from the arcades we were used to.

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Blackpool Tower Circus 1979

One day in 1979 we visited the Tower Circus and I phoned them up beforehand to ask if I could take photos. "There is no video or flash photography allowed." was the answer. So I pushed my film to 800 ASA and took these.

What I didn't do, was to note down the names of the performers. However thanks to the wonders of Google I can now say with confidence that the lady with the horses was Mary Chippenfield, from the famous circus family. She also presented a mixed cage of lions and tigers and for good measure also presented her elephants.

Judy Allen was the fire eater. I'm not keen on food that hot myself...

The Valla Bertini Troupe did trick cycling and a nifty line in catapulting their ladies from a springboard to the top of a human tower.

Finally, here are the Trio Victoria performing a balancing act on the small platform in the centre of the flooded ring as the finale to the show.

The circus ring has been flooded at the end of every performance ever since the Tower opened. The water is sea water and finale acts have included co-ordinated swimming acts in the water as well as acrobatic acts above the water.

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Blackpool Tower Top View, 1975

On a somewhat windy 1975 day I took my then girlfriend, the delectable Miss Franny (she really was a "miss" then!) up to the top of Blackpool Tower.

Looking north with an unfortunate slight wobble - either me or the camera - the pier is Blackpool's North Pier, with the War Memorial in its garden close to the Metropole Hotel, which is the only hotel on the seaward side of the tram lines. In the distance, the coast curves gently inwards and then out again towards Fleetwood.

Looking east over the town. At the bottom of the photo is the Tower's great rival, the Winter Gardens with the distinctive ivory white tiles of the 1930s. This is the west entrance on Coronation Street. The glass dome is over the rotunda, behind the main Church Street entrance to the left. Further up Church Street are the blue and white tiles of the ABC theatre, opened in 1963. In 1975 comedy duo and brothers Mike and Bernie Winters were headlining.

Looking down... A sign warns that the throwing of any article whatsoever is strictly forbidden. Even a small coin dropped from that height could be fatal if it hit someone on the head.

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A Sun-Drenched Pleasure Beach 1979

We are back at Blackpool Pleasure Beach for this article and the year is 1979. It takes me a while to write these things you know...

I'm mainly on the look out for people enjoying themselves and these two girls certainly fit the bill.

The dodgems found their way onto fairgrounds in the early 1920s and, as the name suggests, the original idea was to avoid contact with other cars. Consequently the cars of the time were little more than a seat and steering wheel on a flat circular platform with only the minimum of protection. In fact the protection was designed more to protect the circular platform than the riders who must have found it all too easy to fall out, with no seat belts and no enclosing bodywork on the platform!

The Log Flume was always a great place to take photos of riders enjoying themselves, though the opportunity disappeared when the shops and businesses of Ocean Boulevard were built, blocking the view of the lake.

The Cyclone. For a while in the late 1970s through the 1980s, the southern half of the park had many of these travelling fairground rides, many of them operated as concessions.

Until the advent of more modern tall rides the landmark feature of the Pleasure Beach as you walked from the town centre down the Promenade towards the park was the double Ferris Wheel. By the 1970s it was rare to see both wheels in operation at the same time. They travelled in opposite directions, one rising at the front and the other descending at the front. The huge figure of a clown stood at the side of the wheels, facing north up the Promenade and appearing to crank it by hand as it revolved.

The Grand National ride has two cars racing each other side-by-side along a double track and the ride forms a Möbius loop, meaning that each car returns to the starting point of the other car as the ride finishes. This is accomplished by having the cars turn away from each other at the start of the ride, then coming together to ascend the chain rise. Thus the car on the left as passengers got on, will be on the right as they start to go up the first hill of the ride.

A simple ride but effective. Balance a cone on a stick, tilt it and twiz it round and you can achieve a similar ride for your insect collection...

Another of the portable rides from the south half of the park, this was a similar ride to the north park's Monster ride. A variant of the old Octopus ride.

The Revolution was the UK's first 180-degree looping roller coaster. It looped twice, forwards and then backwards as it returned to its station.

These were the days before the turnstiles. You could enter the park for free and buy your tickets as you found something to go on. Tickets were originally bought at the entrance to each ride, then later these ticket booths came out with each ride designated A-Rides for the white-knuckle rides, through to D-Rides for gentle kiddie-friendly rides like the Pleasure Beach Express.

And we'll finish with a smile from a pretty girl on the carousel.

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Fade To Black And White

A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to move my files of film negatives and, to my dismay, as soon as I picked up a file half of the pages slipped to the floor.

The "pages" were plastic sheets, each holding seven strips of negatives. Whilst these do not get used all that much, they are still the definitive version of my early photographs and for any publication work a fresh scan is needed at high resolution.

The problem was time. Isn't it always...? But in this case it was the effects of time on thin plastic sheets bought around 35 years ago. They had degraded to the point where the punched holes for the file's ring binders just ripped out. Indeed huge chunks of plastic were breaking free at every single touch. So I've had to buy a new supply of sleeves, choosing Kenro paper sleeves this time. Whilst I had the negatives out I thought I might run a few through the scanner again.

Each time I do this I'm amazed at the leap in the quality of reproduction. When I first scanned them onto a computer it was at the size of 320x240 pixels when the entire VDU screen could squeeze no more than 800x600 pixels altogether. Photo screen savers were as yet unknown so I didn't think at the time to try scanning any larger. These days I can scan a 35mm negative up to tens of thousands of pixels. My current screen size is 1680x1050 and for reproduction a scan of over 5000 pixels is required for a sharp image. I'm amazed at people who think they can take a small image off the web and resize it, thinking that the "hidden details" will adjust the sharpness as they go along. Nooooooo!

This image was taken in 1971 from the interior of a cave on the beach outside the harbour wall at Polperro in Cornwall. Not an easy topic for a light meter to cope with...

Moving north into Devon in the same year, here is a shot taken from the top of Clovelly's main street which descends down to the beach at a gradient that taxes the back coming up and the knees going down! This was not a sunny day...!

1972 and that's me on the right on stage with the band Spiral somewhere in Oldham. At the time I was working in a photographic studio and was necessarily in trendy mode...

The year after I was working for myself and the hair had grown a bit again, before it all fell out a few years after... I'd never fit into those dark green velvet trousers these days either...

Also from 1973. Spiral it's fair to say, was not a top-earning band... When we didn't have a gig we would go out for last orders at a pub in Failsworth (between Oldham and Manchester) and as it was on a cul-de-sac, we would park near this house. It was always in darkness, unless the inhabitants only occupied the rear of the place, and we always used to joke it was haunted. We called it Terror Towers or something similarly ridiculous that would appeal to a teenage mind after a pint of Watneys Red...

In 1974 my parents moved to Blackpool to take over a small hotel on Trafalgar Road, which runs between the Promenade and Lytham Road, close to The Manchester pub. I stayed on in Rochdale for a while and came over to Blackpool for free food at weekends... This was the view of the Pleasure Beach from the South Pier in 1974. Not only is this pre-Big One roller coaster and Ocean Boulevard, it's before the Space Tower was built or the Avalanche. The old Aztec frontage to the River Caves can be seen extreme left. In front of the Big Dipper with its old spherical finial is a simple roundabout ride, dating back to the late 50s or early 60s, of space rockets that could be raised or lowered by means of a joystick in each rocket.

Circa 1976-78 this shot from the Central Pier shows Blackpool's previous sea wall and the slade used for vehicle access to the beach. The pedestrian footbridge is very new and Lewis's and Woolworth's stores bookend the Tower. Visitors are enjoying a lively sea and the beach food carts and caravans sit waiting for the tide to go out.

From the pedestrian footbridge we can look along the Promenade roadway, looking north. This was taken on August Bank Holiday Monday, 1978. The Vauxhall car in front of the bus is brand new as the T-registration only came out on the first of that month. The bus is single-decker 571 and on it's way to Manchester Square. There's a healthy crowd of visitors on the Promenade and the roadway has two lanes of traffic in each direction with room for a central refuge for crossing pedestrians.

1976 and Brush tramcar 638 turns off the Promenade to return to the Rigby Road depot along Lytham Road. A car driver is hoping the tram will let him scoot in front once the pedestrians have cleared the way. At this time no other town in England had had street trams for over twenty years and many visiting drivers had sudden panic moments as they realised that Blackpool's trams were not going to swerve away from their antics...

In 1977 riding the Grand National roller coaster meant bouncing out of your seats and holding a handrail on the back of the seat in front of you. Restraints of any kind were not thought necessary. Just to make sure however, as the coaster trains neared the top of the lift hill a recorded voice politely said: "Please... do not stand up..."

Fourth 1977 Blackpool Photo Album, 2: The Golden Mile

Blackpool's Golden Mile features on today's flashback to 1977, with reminders of the Dr Who Exhibition, Lewis's department store, the building of Coral Island and the Golden Mile Centre.

I start with the Lewis's store as the only shot that is less oriented towards the holiday maker. Though it did draw them in their thousands of course. The store, which opened in 1964, is still fondly remembered in the town and added considerably to the aesthetics of the Promenade with it's turquoise tiling and backlit frontage. In 1977 it carried red, white and blue ribbons for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. It closed in 1993.

Another fine sight on the Golden Mile, though a brand new use for the building, was Ripley's Believe It Or Not Odditorium. Celebrating the startling and freakish amongst both nature and achievement, it was fun to visit and brilliantly stand-out at night when the large signboard lit up with bright red neon. A short time later Ripley installed a glass tube that fed water from a pool below to a huge tap that, as the water cascaded from the tube seemed to be flowing from the tap. The water then obscured the pipe so that the tap seemed to be suspended on a column of falling water. It was very effective. Sadly I have no photograph of it.

An out of season shot of Ripley's, also showing the Golden Mile Centre.

This was Blackpool's first large purpose-built amusement arcade. It would eventually become Mr Bee's and today houses the Sea Life Centre.

Together with Ripley's it dominated the Central Beach area of the Golden Mile. The bright blue and yellow of the Silver Jubilee commemorative tram passes by and the two port-a-cabins towards the left are the Lost Children's Centre (white) and a first-aid post in blue. There's a Wall's ice cream kiosk on the beach and I think the other one is selling seafood type rubbish for the southern visitors...

Why anyone would eat jellied eels and whelks is beyond me, though the practice of putting unidentifiable pap on meals and sandwiches is sadly spreading northwards. When people in the south say "we'll eat out" I invariably hear it as "we'll eat owt..." The number of times I went to London for work and had to point at something on a buffet saying "what the hell is that???" doesn't bear thinking of. But for all their culinary short-comings (they seem never to have heard of a crust for instance), the people are remarkably likeable!

For a couple of years the Golden Mile Centre hosted an exhibition of models and puppets from the Gerry Anderson TV portfolio. Twizzle, Torchy the Battery Boy, Four Feather Falls, Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray (Whoopee - colour!) (Waah! We still had a black and white telly!), Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, UFO, Space 1999... I used to go in and just lap up pleasure until it got dark and they threw me out...

An early season shot before they installed a massive and animated ogre figure over the end of this building to advertise The Horror Crypt. My goodness gracious, that steamed up a lot of people in the council who shouted their disgust and distress loud and clear, ignoring the fact that it was carrying on a great tradition of the Golden Mile. Farther into the distance are the green girders that would later hold up the roof of the new Coral Island centre, due to open in 1978.

The Devil's Den was a short-lived exhibition next door to the Brunswick which has opened a self-service fish and chip cafe. Self-service in those days meant you got a tray and slid it across rails whilst you gave your order and then waited for it to be plated before sliding the tray to the till. It wasn't too many years since this would have been unthinkable - that your order wouldn't be taken and served by a waitress in black with starched white apron. "What do I do? What do I do???" muttered people helplessly as others sat at empty tables, fuming because they had been there half an hour without anyone taking their order... The same people a few years later let food go cold in MacDonalds whilst they searched for cutlery...

The old-style open sheds full of flick-ball games, Ber-o-Mat one-armed bandits, pinball machines so old they didn't have flippers etc. were in their last throes. The old houses and hotels behind them that they were built onto had been neglected so long that they were in danger of collapsing. Nothing above ground floor level had been in use for decades.

The kiosks at the front of the arcades were the last bastions of those oh-so-scrummy hamburgers (which now had to be called beefburgers due to advertising law) which were fried on a griddle and then propped up in a row on the back of the griddle plate amongst a pile of fried onions that kept them hot. Asking for lettuce (even though it would have been lettuce and not some sort of weird-looking "salad leaf", then still correctly thought of as inedible) or pickle or a slice of tomato would have earned you guffaws of hysterics. Only recently was it becoming acceptable, though not yet the norm, to ask for a slice of cheese. You had your bun, a burger, lots of fried onions and it was normal to put ketchup or mustard or possibly both on it.

Youngsters have always wondered why old people get so grumpy. And I can now say that for every generation it's because everything that has been familiar and comfortable and good seems to get swept away by following generations. To those youngsters who read this I can say with all surety that you will feel like this yourself when you get older. Sadly though the generation between mine and yours is doing their best to ensure you will never get chance to do this yourselves because they are destroying things for you already, having got into power and now looking after their rich chums whilst dancing with their fingers in their ears in case they hear something that might prick the last remaining vestige of conscience they might have. Robin Hood, we need you back more than ever...

The other reason older people are grumpy is that it is, actually, quite good fun...

Down at Chapel Street, opposite the Central Pier. At the end of the building is an exhibition of props and costumes from Dr Who. The entrance is the Tardis itself, which can be seen halfway down the side of the building. Another of those bits of Blackpool's past that seems to be lovingly remembered. Incredibly almost, we were still only on the fourth Doctor at the time. Tom Baker played the Doctor from 1974 to 1981, lasting not quite as long as did the exhibition which lasted from 1974 to 1985.

As I write it is New Year's Eve. Tomorrow will be 2016, so a Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope it will be / is / was!

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