1970s-80s - People In Blackpool, Part 3

Another selection of Blackpool folk and visitors enjoying Blackpool in the days before mobile phones.

We are back to good old black and white photos for today and again it will include a mix of topics, though quite a few will feature the Pleasure Beach. We'll kick off with one of the attendants on the North Pier talking to two ladies sunning themselves on the side benches. One of them at least is riveted by what he is saying and his job at this time (in the early 1980s) allows him to enjoy smoking his briar pipe whilst working.

The sound of a fairground organ, squeals of children and the hum of many people squeezing past one another along the pathways of the Pleasure Beach. The carousel of gallopers was a feature of the Pleasure Beach south of Watson Road for a few years from the late 1970s.

There's a couple of photos this time in response to requests. The first request was for any shots I might have of the Steeplechase ride in action.

These two photos were taken in 1982. The vast majority of my photos from this year were taken in black and white. I could process the films myself whereas colour films had to be taken to a chemist or photographic shop for developing and printing (D&P as it was known). This cost a considerable amount of money and it was far cheaper to put black plastic sheets over the bathroom window and process my own black and white films. Photography is free now, once you have bought the camera or phone. It was once quite an expensive hobby.

The other request was for any shots of Blackpool's donkeys and their operators. I don't have many of these I'm afraid. But this was one that I took off the deck of Central Pier. The tide was still on its way out and very little of the beach has been uncovered as yet. The structure at the top centre is one of the legs supporting the old lifeboat house. The sand still wet and dark to the seaward side of the walking donkeys.

The sea was so close to the beach in fact that people were playing in it at the side of the pier's arcade. These four young girls were shrieking and splashing away at each other and having a great time.

The Rock Shoppe. Rock was such a large part of going to the seaside when I was small. It was almost unthinkable not to have a stick of it. I remember going at least once during a week's holiday to watch it being made, though this seems to be a Great Yarmouth more than a Blackpool memory for me. We lived in Rochdale at the time and Blackpool was a fairly regular (if not as often as I'd like) trip whilst Great Yarmouth was a car-testing long run to a place where locals spoke with a strange accent.

As a boy it was fascinating to watch the letters being formed and then the rock being stretched until the massive column, too large to hug, was stretched to the thickness of a stick of rock, snipped into the right length by one of the rollers who used their whole forearms to roll the rock so that it kept its round shape and didn't flatten whilst it cooled.

The forecourt of the Hounds Hill Shopping Centre became a favourite spot for buskers in its early days. Here Dorothy Perkins occupies the spot currently taken by the Disney Store. The glass-roofed forecourt was free of stalls and units at that point.

And on the same day, these were to be found at the entrance to Hounds Hill from Adelaide Street. They were quite good - a trio playing folk instrumentals with guitar, accordion and a dulcimer.

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Blackpool Houndshill Adelaide Street Entrance

A while ago I had a comment on one of my 1982 photos on Flickr.

It was taken in July 1982, at a time when the Houndshill shopping centre - I can't remember anyone calling it a "mall" then - was fairly new. This was the "rear" entrance, with the main entrance on Victoria Street.

Someone asked what shop occupied the Goldbergs site in 2012, so I went down yesterday to take a photo from the same viewpoint.

There has been considerable change. More than is immediately apparent.

The people approaching the doors of the centre in 1982 could instead have turned right and walked down a side street that would have brought them to the Argos store on Albert Road. There was an exit from the Houndshill multi-storey car park that utilised this road.

Because the road was narrow and heavily used by pedestrians, cars leaving the car park posed a risk and the exit was closed and the front of the shopping centre extended forward to block access to and from the side street.

Just inside the entrance now on the right hand side is a Costa coffee outlet and, behind that, the whole interior of the mall has been extended south to lead down into the new Debenhams store.

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A Trip Back to 1981

Sheesh, me old kebab! There's a few memories going through the scanner at the moment from 1981. I was still taking mostly black and white photos at the time, which I processed and developed myself, blacking out the bathroom with thick plastic over the windows and getting giddy on the heady aroma of chemicals in which I sloshed prints about with gay abandon.

First offering today is this one of the then new market stalls in Rochdale. We came from Rochdale originally and whilst Fran's parents were still alive made fairly regular trips back to see them.

The market had recently moved from the bottom of Yorkshire Street to a new spot near the brand new indoor market and the council had provided these new stalls with rather garish plastic canopies in a choice of bright red or bright yellow. The locals hated them and quickly dubbed the new market Toytown!

Meanwhile in Blackpool, this is a shot of the Hounds Hill shopping mall. It felt very futuristic at the time. Mothercare is the large shop on the left and had a front both in the mall and on Adelaide Street West (Adelaide Street having been cut into two portions by the development).

This was my first set of stereo headphones, in ivory plastic with brown foam pads. They were identical to the pair owned by a lad called Paul Fitton, who went to the same school as me and a mutual friend had introduced us way back in 1969. He played me several Moody Blues albums through the headphones and I was knocked out by the clarity of the sound and the stereo effect.

At the time Dad had a stereo set-up, but with a huge cinema speaker at one side whilst for the right hand channel the stereo valve amplifier was plugged into the large 1950s radio set. Not a good match... I bought the headphones and would spend many a night in my own world of Moody Blues, The Supremes and other stuff which would embarrass me greatly to reveal it now... My God, how could I...

Finally a couple of shots from a trip to London at the very end of January 1981. This was the first time I had ever gone away for work, the first time after 5 years of married life that I'd spent a night separated from Fran and the first time I'd ever stayed in a large hotel.

Holidays were spent in the UK at that time and we always stayed in guest houses rather than hotels. This was an eye-opener and I remember feeling ridiculously impressed with the lavish richness of my surroundings! Even the experience of walking up to a Reception Desk was something I'd ever only seen in James Bond movies...

There was a telephone!!! In the room!!! Look at that natty 1970 wall-phone design too! Push buttons were still a definite luxury - and it wasn't that posh a hotel! I can't remember which hotel it was I'm afraid...

It did have a mini-bar though, although of course I had been warned not to use it as they were unbelievably expensive! Can you make out the prices in the photo? Wish you could find one in a hotel priced like that now?

Blackpool Hounds Hill Centre 1982

One for the Vanished Blackpool series. I'm afraid I haven't stirred myself yet to take the camera into the newly refurbished and enlarged Hounds Hill Centre in Blackpool. I did note that it had a tiled surface leading down a slope towards the new Debenams that made me wonder about how slippery it might be when the weather outside was wet. I always seem to choose shoes that at the merest hint of moisture skid all over the place leaving me floundering and waving my arms about like windmills whilst onlookers point and laugh...

Anyway, by way of making up for this lack of photographic effort, here's an older photo, shot in 1982 of the then relatively new Hounds Hill Centre when it had an open front much used by buskers. One of the regulars I remember was a Franciscan monk who, to his credit, never laughed when I fell over on a wet floor...

A bit of music always provided a good atmosphere and at the time there were some good musicians playing lively music.

A folk band playing jigs and reels at the rear entrance to Houndshill.

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