Snow Falls in Blackpool and District

Monday 31 January 1983. We awake to the sight of snow falling in Blackpool.

Grabbing a camera, I set off to walk up the Promenade. Usually snow in Blackpool means a few tiny flakes floating for half an hour. It is very rare to see snow actually start to settle let alone cover the ground like this.

Having lived here in Blackpool for almost half a century, this is the only time I can remember snow covering the sand on the beach! Although on saying that, we only lived close to the seafront for five years, whilst my parents had a hotel on Trafalgar Road.

The White Church in St Annes looks a little whiter amidst the snow. It doesn't take long for traffic to start turning the snow into dirty coloured slush on the roads! And sadly, that is it. Why I didn't take more photographs that day I really can't remember. Either I had to be somewhere else or I was too skint to buy film (photography was an expensive hobby back then!) or I was afflicted by a fierce desire to be back in the warmth of home... I'm not sure. Whatever the reason, these were the only record of the day that I was to make.

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Taking The Genteel Airs Of St Annes, Lancashire

Sunday 29 May 2016. It's Spring Bank Holiday weekend and we decide to have lunch out at the Beach Cafe, St Annes. It's a beautiful day. We park on a side road off the Promenade near to the Pier and walk along to the cafe which is family owned and run.

The Fylde coast does from time to time see a bit of rough weather - as witness what used to be the end of the pier standing forlornly a distance from the current end of the pier... But today the temperatures are up, the ice cream is selling fast - and melting fast - and some jaunty blue umbrella sunshades have sprung up to convince you that this is Hawaii.

St Annes is just a few miles south of Blackpool and was always a little more genteel. A half-way stop between Blackpool and Lytham. Stone designs in the bridge pathways were laid down in 1909. A little hard to see on this photograph admittedly, but a few minutes searching around this spot and you will find stone depictions of anchors and windmills and geometric designs all made out of pebbles set into the cement.

The bridges take you over the waterways and gardens. For the more adventurous there are some stepping stones over the waterway at one point. They too have been there a hundred years or more and I have some ancient cine film of myself as a baby being carried over them by my Grandad!

These gardens are still unspoilt by the change in national pasttimes and tastes from the 20th to the 21st century. The ducks can enjoy their use of the water, largely undisturbed by the shouts or chasing of children.

At the southern end of the water garden is the waterfall, with the path leading through a little grotto behind the fall. Behind the waterfall and the rockeries, topped by that luxuriant shrubbery is the Promenade.

Back to the Pier and turning inland, we come to the centre of St Annes. This looks away from the seafront along St Annes Road West. The traffic lights control the crossing of the main coast route from Blackpool to Lytham, a little further along the coast.

Whilst it is no different from any high street in that it has been affected by changing shopping habits, St Annes has reacted by enhancing the existing flower beds and garden layouts, creating new social spaces which are enjoyed by residents and visitors alike.

A sad occurrence locally was the loss of the department store J.R. Taylor. The largest independent department store in the area went into administration in December 2014 and closed its doors for the last time on 17 January 2015 when no buyer could be found. The property is currently available to rent.

Garden Street is another shopping street leading from St Annes Road West, the main street, to the entrance to Ashton Gardens. This municipal park has a bowling green, children's playground and the Pavilion Cafe.

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Classic Car Rally at Fairhaven Lake

The other day Fran noticed an announcement in the local paper about a classic vehicle rally at Fairhaven Lake, Lytham St Annes. I love any chance to wallow in a bit of nostalgia, so we shrugged at the weather and ignored the threatening low clouds and made our way in my own somewhat less than vintage Mazda to find a large display of cars, motorbikes and dolls prams. I'll concentrate on the cars...

The lovely Ford MkII Zephyr was amongst the first to catch my eye. I have a strong liking for Zephyrs as my Dad had three MkIVs and both my Grandad and I had a MkIII at various times. The Mk II was one of the Three Graces of Consul (basic model), Zephyr (mid range) and Zodiac (executive model). The name Consul got dropped from the MkIII and MkIV ranges, being instead applied to the MkI Cortina and the stylish Ford Consul Classic, the first British car I remember having twin headlamps. The name then disappeared until the Zephyr and Zodiacs were replaced by the first Ford Granada, which had a Consul as the basic model.

Oh and these are just lovely! The second half of the 1940s saw the Bentley MkVI in production as the first luxury car of the post-war period. I've never had one sadly, though I have driven one on very rare occasions as I spent six months in the early 1970s working in a photographic studio that had one for wedding work. The gear lever sat in the door well on the driver's right side and the steering wheel included levers for advancing or retarding the carburettor timing and also an early form of cruise control. A real head turner. A real pocket emptier... the one at the studio only did 8 miles per gallon!

Late 1950s or early 60s Ford Anglia. This was the two-door version of the Ford Prefect. There were few other external differences between the two cars, the rear light cluster was the only way of telling them apart, other than counting the doors! One of the first Fords to have flashing indicators fitted. They were worked from the tiny wing-like thumb switch on top of the steering wheel hub, which you pushed to either side to confuse fellow drivers, who up until then had been used to drivers either sticking their arms out of the window or using the semaphore-like trafficators which popped up from the side of the car between the front and rear doors of most cars.

This is an interior view of a Standard. The company became part of the Triumph company but this late 1950s car is unusual for having no clutch. Despite the standard (sorry!) gear lever, it had a semi-automatic gear system. In common with all cars of the time, the headlight dip switch is a toggle foot switch high up on the left of the driver's foot well under the instrument display. To the left of the single dial is the heater control - a single knob moving from top (hot) to bottom (cold).

The Riley 1.5 touring saloon has a mascot depicting a skier which would definitely do damage to any unfortunate who might be hit and thrown over the bonnet... Lots of older cars had these mascots. You could even buy other designs to fit your car. Later, laws came out that any mascots fitted by manufacturers had to be safe from causing injury. Rolls Royce have a mechanism that causes their mascots to fall away, Mercedes ring mascots with the three spokes are sprung so they would fold flat (but are handy as a sighting device...) but mascots such as the famous leaping jaguar on... er... Jaguars, have just about died out altogether. However the legislation (Type Approval) seems to be now defunct and I've seen advice that owners can retrospectively fit mascots, but in so doing lay themselves open to legal action if the mascots subsequently cause injury. Don't take my word for it - if you fancy fitting a mascot, check out the current law!

A trio of Morris Minors. These sold in huge numbers and are a much-loved car even now. The forerunner of the Mini, the dashboard arrangement and interior trim is instantly familiar to anyone who had an early Mini, the single large dial for the speedometer, open shelving to the side of it, leather straps rather than solid handles to close the door. Though this open-topped example does have door handles on the inside rather than the early Mini's "bit of string". (They had a chord that hung over the side map pockets in the doors and the door was opened by grabbing and pulling the chord.) The second example is a Morris Minor Traveller - commonly used by company representatives, who as a body were called commercial travellers in the 1950s and 60s. The woodwork suggests the old shooting brakes of earlier decades and are part of the transformation of that type of car to the more modern estate car.

A Triumph Herald. I used to like these cars as they were uniquely shaped. The bonnet and wings are a single piece - opening the bonnet is a matter of swinging the entire front of the car upwards. It is hinged at the front, not the rear, so when it is raised, it forms a wall at the extreme front of the car and you can lean in over the wheels because the wings are not in the way. The suspension is such that when the car was jacked up the wheels didn't remain vertical but sort of droop...

The Vauxhall Victor F, made from 1957 replacing the chunkier Wyvern model with a car that leaned heavily on America for its styling, yet was designed in-house in Gt Britain. It had a 3-speed gearbox with steering column mounted gear lever and front bench seat. Compare the rake of the windscreen with more modern cars!

The Ford Cortina Club had a collection of mainly MkV Cortinas. There was one MkI, one MkII and a MkIV. Elsewhere amongst the cars was a MkIII. Dad had had a couple of MkIs and I had one of each of the MkIII, MkIV and MkV. My favourite had to be the MkIII of the early 1970s, a beautiful car.

Large Format Slides

I recently came across a few boxes of large format colour transparencies, shot on 120 film (6x6cm or 2.25x2.25inches). They were shot on a Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex camera that I bought in the early 1970s mainly to take wedding photos with, that being my job at the time.

But I also shot lots of stock photos for magazines etc. The film I used for colour slides was Ektachrome64, rated at 64 ASA or ISO as we would say now. I used to process this myself using Barfen chemicals, which had to be kept at a constant temperature around 40 degrees centigrade, which was achieved by filling the bath with hot water and floating the tank containing the film...

The slides have not fared well. The containers are not airtight and they are heavily contaminated with 30 years worth of dust. I've removed the worst of it but the photos are still not exactly best quality. Short of spending hours on each, they are going to stay that way I'm afraid!

St Annes Road West, the main shopping street of St Annes on Sea just south of Blackpool. When the Lancashire mill workers flocked to Blackpool, the mill owners took their holidays in St Annes and Lytham. So much more refined you know...

Lytham Windmill in snow. We don't see a lot of snow on the Lancashire coast so shots like these were quite saleable to magazines and I used to make the most of any snowfall we might get, often driving out before the snowploughs had been out.

The impressive front of the Harris Library and Museum in Preston. Shots like this often find themselves on the front covers of local magazines, though on this one I haven't left enough space for text to be added without obscuring the columns.

More to come!

Large versions of the photos: st annes, windmill, harris library

Sand Yacht Racing at St Annes

I've got up to September 1982 in my scanning of my old black and white negatives.

This week I came across a number of photos that I took for an article for Lancashire Magazine in 1982 of the sand yachts on the beach at St Annes on Sea.

This is a huge expanse of sand, open to the Irish Sea although the tide here never comes close to the edge of the beach.

As such this is a very windy place! There are huge sand hills here, dunes that are held back by star grass - at one time there was a local law that families had to plant so much star grass every year to keep the sand from swamping the villages along the coast. Even now you regularly find huge piles of sand as far back from the "front" as the main road from Lytham towards Blackpool and Starr Gate.

This wind is what makes the sport of sand yachting possible.

In the September of 1982, there was a brand spanking new Coastguard Station on the front at St Annes and it's from around here that the sand yachts congregated and went off on their zig-zag courses out on the flat sands.

The Fylde International Sand Yacht Club was formed in 1951 and hosted several large national and international competitions at St Annes.

In 1953 Richard Denning and a number of friends broke the British and World speed records here on the beach in their yacht Coronation Mk II. Unconfirmed speeds of over 70mph had been achieved - and here I'm looking back at my notes of 1982.

However thare has been no sand yachting at St Annes since a blanket ban in 2002 after a racing yacht struck a member of the public, killing her as she walked with her two sons in 1982. The pilot of the sand yacht was cleared of manslaughter but the ban has been in place ever since.

Currently a three month trial of sand yachting is coming to a close with close scrutiny on public safety and the effects on local and visiting wild life, particularly the various bird populations.

Large verions of the photos: racing yachts, coastguard station, lone yacht, stationary yachts

Pinball Owners Assoc. Convention 1995

I've been scanning more of the dusty old negatives from my goody bag this weekend.

I'm trawling through the bag more or less at random but it still seems to be 1995/1996 that's coming up to the top.

In 1995 I helped the UK Pinball Owners' Association arrange their annual convention and World Pinball Championship at a hotel venue in Lytham St Annes.

We had a fabulous weekend playing the silver ball with a huge number of machines on free play to delegates. I managed to do extremely badly in the competition but never mind!

I had taken two older pinballs from the electro-mechanical age along - Williams' Lucky Ace and their Spanish Eyes machine. Also my jukebox was employed all weekend, belting out early 1960s tunes at top volume!

Happy memories!

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