Blackpool Tower 1986

A few photos of Blackpool Tower, taken in 1986.

Starting with a shot of the Tower as seen from South Promenade courtesy of my telephoto lens. The windmill was a replica only. It held a navigation light, visible out at sea and was generally found at the junction of Waterloo Road with the Promenade. A signpost on the right points out the direction to the Lido swimming baths, which were on the corner of Lytham Road with a street a little south of Waterloo Road.

A shot from the Central Pier. The tide has not long since gone out, as the sand is still dark and damp. The ice cream caravans, plus teas and snacks and seafood have all come out early as the tide recedes to get the best spot. The brightly coloured windbreaks are in evidence too - Blackpool is noted for its breezes!

Getting closer to the Tower. Woolworths have departed from their flagship building on the Promenade and Pricebusters have taken on the ground floor space, letting out stalls to market traders. On the north side of the Tower, the grand Lewis's building of the 1960s is still there, though its days are numbered.

By leaning against the railings at the very edge of the Promenade I can almost squeeze in a full image of the Tower, though even my wide-angle lens is unable to get both the very top and very bottom in the same shot. The Victorian arches over the doorways have been covered in garish plastic, though the archways are depicted in bright primary coloured spots.

As I cross the road to the front of the Tower, standing outside is "Little" Jimmy Buchanan, stooge to the great Charlie Cairoli. Jimmy was a star in his own right, recipient of Heaven only knows how many pies in the face over his many years performing with Charlie. He was happy to pose for this portrait which I hope brings out the warmth of his character.

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Blackpool Memories from the 1980s

The last couple of days I've been scanning some of my colour slides, taken in Blackpool. I'd love to say that my filing system for slides was as good as my system for black and white negatives - which were stored seven strips of five negatives in plastic or tissue pages in a binder. The page would be dated and the negatives numbered by strip with negatives A to E.

Colour slides were single photographs and whilst also mainly stored in similar albums on pages with 20 individual plastic pockets, many of them got taken out to be stored in those long magazines that fed into a projector ready for those winter nights when the "big screen" would come out. As different presentations were put together, some for family, others for the local photographic society etc. they inevitably got mixed up a bit and because I also used to send them off to magazines for publication it got too easy to get them mixed up and wonder what year they came from... So thirty years on, here's a few slides most of which I think come from 1986!

Looking up the Promenade from South Pier. The windmill opposite Waterloo Road was more for decoration than milling flour (which it never did). It originally was installed to disguise a ventilation shaft at Manchester Square in 1931 and was moved to the Promenade opposite Waterloo Road in 1963. It was illuminated during the autumn illuminations and the sails were motorised so they would turn. It was removed to allow the sea defences and new promenade work to take place a few years ago.

If any of these photos is not from 1986 then this is one of the most likely candidates. From 1976 to 1981 we lived adjacent to the Promenade near Manchester Square and at weekends would often just walk into town early on Saturdays. We then moved down south shore and a bit away from the Prom but it was still a regular occurrence for us to walk down to the sea front and into town.

Every morning the council used to send these lorries out to wash the Promenade roadway. High pressure jets on the front of the vehicle used to blast at the road surface and rotary brushes would follow. This does pre-date the June 2008 regulations requiring horse-drawn landau owners to fit dung catchers to their horses. At first ridiculed as "nappies" in the national press, the catchers, designed by the RSPCA, did play a huge role in cutting down the much criticised piles of pongy poo on the road.

A sunny day on the North Pier. The least commercialised of Blackpool's piers has always remained the favourite of sunbathers. The side benches may get a little uncomfortable after an hour, but deckchairs could be hired regardless of the state of the tide either on the northern side of the pier or in the sun lounge which not only provided shelter from the wind but had gentle entertainment from the organist.

The pier tram was later to commandeer the northern half stretch of the pier. But for now it was a quiet haven for relaxation. With few personal electronics and no Internet people read books, magazines and newspapers. The cassette-playing Sony Walkman was well established by 1986 and their first portable CD players (called Discman until 1999 when they became CD-Walkman) were brought out in 1984.

I remember taking this photograph from the pier one Saturday morning. During the week there had been a death from drowning in the sea which had been featured on the news and yet people still thought think of Blackpool as a gently sloping and therefore safe beach. There are currents and underflows however. This young lad isn't necessarily an idiot. But his parents... Respect the sea. It won't respect you at all...

Donkeys by law had a day off every week in Blackpool. Like the tourists themselves, the donkeys would lie in wait (well... stand in groups...) for the tide to go out and would then be amongst the first on the beach as soon as a bit of sand appeared. The first eager sun seekers were advised not to wear expensive shoes on the beach as feet are much easier to wash...

Walking past the front of Blackpool Tower one day I came across "Little" Jimmy Buchanan, stooge to the great Charlie Cairoli. Jimmy was a star in his own right, recipient of Heaven only knows how many pies in the face over his many years performing with Charlie. He was happy to pose for this portrait which I hope brings out the warmth of his character.

Having stepped as far back as possible and leaning backwards over the railings of the Promenade's edge, I almost manage to fit in the full height of Blackpool Tower with a wide-angle lens.

This one could be either 1984 or 1985. Taken at Blackpool Zoo it shows the female orang-utan Azimat with her daughter Victoria. Vicky was born in 1984 and is now the matriarch of the orang-utans at Blackpool with two daughters of her own, Cherie and Summer. Born with a dental problem, she was taught by keepers to bare her teeth for inspection and as a consequence delights zoo customers by grinning at them regularly!

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Clown Time

A while since I featured any coin slot machines, so here's a short article around the theme of clowns.

In the amusement arcades of the 1950s and early 1960s most machines were still mechanical rather than powered by electricity. In any case "electrONic" was a word with an extra syllable and not yet in everyday use. It certainly did not mean the current meaning of the word, which now implies printed circuit boards. And that was probably because transistors were not in use until the mid sixties so complex electronics had to be performed with valves and wires and a chunky base unit.

There were lots of these in those 1950s arcades. Most people called them "Allwins", though that was a popular model of them. We called them "Flick-a-Balls" because that's what you did! They were an efficient way to lose money, though if you got the trick you could usually replicate it. A win got you your penny back and a free go.

Peppy the Clown (Sometimes "Pepe") was popular with children because at the time there were lots of puppet shows on children's TV. Cheaper to make than either cartoons or live action shows with expensive actors, the strings were painfully visible even on the small black and white TV screens of the day. This arcade machine played music and you could press any of four buttons which lifted his arms and legs. Wow, we knew how to have fun in those days...!

Moving out of the arcade to the stalls along the pier or on the Pleasure Beach, these were usually lined up side by side along the stall. Ping pong balls were put in the clown's mouth and dropped through the tube and into a numbered slot below which gave the score. Of course, the clown's head and therefore the tube would be moving all the time and ping pong balls bounce a lot! A variant had a goose's head instead of a clown and the cheapie version had no moving parts, but had a sloped perspex sheet down which you rolled the balls which bounced off a back plate before dropping to the lower level and then rolled back down towards you, landing in a numbered slot.

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A Little Lights Relief

Whilst Blackpool Illuminations are shining out a mile and a bit away from my house, I'm also being reminded of the display from 1982 which has been going through the scanner recently.

Blackpool changes so rapidly that 30 years is enough for some of the photos to be totally unrecogniseable to visitors and residents of today.

This first shot was taken just south of the Star Inn at the bottom end of the Pleasure Beach. No Ocean Boulevard with its string of shops and kiosks blocking the view of the Pleasure Beach's Log Flume.

And if there were no Ocean Boulevard today the Log Flume is no longer there to be seen... Also no longer to be found are some large tableaux which used to be found at South Shore as well as the Bispham cliffs. Some can be glimpsed in the distance on the far left hand side of the photo.


This one is from a little further north. We are just south of Watson Road for this one.

The familiar blue and red structure of the Big One roller coaster is many years off yet. On the corner of Watson Road the Space Tower takes riders up and around as it spirals up to the top, spins for a couple of revolutions and comes back down again.

Below it is a camera obscura. The bright archway welcomes visitors to Blackpool and the Pleasure Beach. From this point on a busy night cars will take a couple of hours at least to reach the end of the illuminations at Bispham!

By putting the camera on a tripod and leaving the shutter open whilst the Space Tower went up and came down, the lights on the outside of the ride's disc corkscrew up and then cross their own path as the ride comes down.

This must have been a very calm night without any wind as the shutter had to stay open for around three minutes to take this!

And I finish for this time with a much-loved display of clowns. Alternate displays juggled balls and tossed them over the roadway or squirted each other with water pistols - with rows of light representing the water.

There's just another two and a half weeks to go before this year's display turns off until the end of next August.

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