Flying at Blackpool

Blackpool made an early investment into powered flight. As early as 1909 they held an Air Pageant at Squires Gate following a suggestion by Lord Northwick, whose newspaper, the Daily Mail, put up money for a prize for the highest altitude attained. Blackpool Corporation themselves put up a Grand Prize of £2000.

The Grand Prize was won by Henry Farman who had flown 24 circuits of the fledgling airfield, covering over 47 miles, only giving up when the strain of controlling the aircraft in Blackpool's winds became too much physically.

The event would have been Britain's first flying pageant but for Doncaster Corporation at the last minute hastily publicising and staging an event 3 days before Blackpool's event opened on 10 October 2009.

Two years later, however, following another similar event in 1910, the land at Squires Gate was leased and a racecourse was established with the first meeting drawing crowds of 20,000. This early success was not sustained and by 1915 the site was in use as a convalescent home for soldiers from the First World War, the home continuing until 1924.

From the end of the war A.V. Roe operated pleasure flights from the beach immediately in front of the Pleasure Beach, which was itself literally on the beach at that time.

I suspect that the postcard is a fabrication, almost all of the postcards showing the Illuminations were taken in daylight and then darkened and painted with shadows from people and objects and the fact that most of the light bulbs would be the size of footballs giving the game away.

But whilst no aircraft could be lit as is suggested here, there is no doubt that they were a regular sight at Blackpool as many of the Edwardian postcards of Blackpool were obviously taken from aeroplanes flying a good deal lower than any plane would be allowed today!

The Corporation decided to ban flights from the beach after a short while, although the spectacles had also included, for a time, a flying boat called Progress (Blackpool's town motto) which landed on the sea and taxiied onto the beach to load and unload passengers to and from the Isle of Man.

Flying reverted to Squires Gate for a few years until the Corporation, eager to establish a municipal airport, were persuaded to buy land east of Stanley Park for the purpose. This land needed levelling and the Ministy of Labour "trained" unemployed men for two years on the site to develop the airport.

It included a clubhourse with restaurant and bars and an observation tower which still exist and can be seen in the background to this 1983 view of Blackpool Zoo, which was developed on the site in the 1970s.

Despite the success of Disney's Dumbo, elephants do not make good flyers and one here is being attended to by a mate after crashing and rolling on landing...

The site was fairly successful, but could not expand and by the 1930s, aeroplanes were much faster and bigger and required longer runways than could be provided.

Another company re-opened Squires Gate as an airport and won contracts with larger airlines and also to do mail runs to the Isle of Man.

The Corporation eventually sought to take over the site and transfer operations from Stanley Park, the expansion at Squires Gate causing the route to St Annes and Lytham to be suddenly halted at the Halfway House pub but the Second World War saw the site used for military purposes. A huge factory was established to build Wellington Bombers. Parts of it survive as trading and industrial estates. In the 1970s on first moving to Blackpool I worked at Warriners Cash & Carry, housed in one of the units created by the division of the factory space.

After the war there were plans for a ridiculously large airport, including a lagoon for the landing of seaplanes near Southport with road and rail tunnels under the River Ribble providing fast connections to the main Squires Gate site. None of this came to fruition as the Government kept control of airports through the Ministry of Civil Aviation following the departure of the RAF at the end of the war.

The factory turned to making Hawker Hunter jets in 1953 causing yet more Blackpool-Lytham roads to terminate and requiring the building of the current non-coastal route - Queensway - to take traffic around the new long runway required for jet aircraft.

Despite the success of the Isle of Man traffic, international and domestic flights at Blackpool continued to be outshadowed by the successs of the pleasure flight industry.

In the late 1970s and early 80s the airport was quiet enough to allow large Air Displays to be held there. I took the photo of the Flying Fortress making a low pass there during an event in 1978.

Air displays are still a feature of Blackpool's calendar, but although many aircraft use the airport as a base for the event, the displays take place over the sea. These inevitably are against the sun (if it makes an appearance) and are free to spectators as there is no way of charging people to watch over several miles of beach and Promenade. Present displays are flying displays only though, with spectators unable to walk around static displays of historic aircaft apart from very limited displays on the Promende.

Blackpool retains some of the older hangars and buildings and in the 1980s Air Atlantique were still flying DC3 Dakotas, to my mind one of the most beautiful of aircraft on a par with the Spitfire. Two of them were used in 1981 to make a TV series called Airline. Starring Roy Marsden, the series was so successful that a second series was made.

Today the airport has been expanded again. For a while Ryanair operated a twice-daily service to London Stansted which was well used, and although many bemoaned the withdrawal of the service, the improvements to the West Coast rail services made the journey to London much faster anyway.

Whether the airport's fortunes will wax or wane in the future remains to be seen. Which can be said of almost any business!

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A Morning at the British Museum

Sunday 15th January 2012. We had to set off for home around lunch time so there wasn't a great deal of time to go wandering.

We decided on a walk down to the British Museum and the Egyptian Galleries in particular.

There are some massive bits of stone in here, though dwarfed by those you can see on a visit to the Aswan Dam I suspect. I've not done that yet though...

Once up on the top floor amongst the mummies (but no daddies...) we found that not all Egyptian statues are on a massive scale. These are grave goods, presumably there to perform tasks for the departed such as dressing and doing their hair etc. You can just imagine them saying, "Can you bend down a bit? A bit more...?"

The Roman mosaic flooring was displayed on the walls of the staircase. As we were climbing two floors both with rather high ceilings these gave an excuse for a welcome breather on the way up! I'm wondering whether to have Burke Towers done with something like this - I'm sure it would last longer than a carpet...!

And that's this little trip to London dealt with. As a group we are currently planning something a little more ambitious for our next trip together. Stay tuned!

Large versions of the photos: Egyptian Gallery, little sculptures, mosaic

Children's History of Lancashire

Ooh see! A new Children's History of Lancashire popped through my letterbox from Amazon today.

What am I doing buying children's books you may wonder? No it wasn't particularly for my granddaughter as she's a bit young yet! The book contains three of my photographs, so I thought it would be fun to both have a look at a copy to see how they had used them and to keep it for my own records. Most of my published photos I have as tear sheets, i.e. pages torn from magazines and newsletters or trade sheets etc. I might keep this one intact though! I imagine you'll want to rush out and buy a copy now. Check out pages 9, 10 and 11!

A Morning in the Science Museum

14 January 2012. We were in London with friends David and Jeannie and it had been decided that the ladies would go shopping, whilst David and I would have a culturally stimulating morning.

The ladies vetoed Soho however, so we got on a bus and headed for the Science Museum. We waved to them from the top deck of our bus as we went past them at Oxford Circus!

Here are just a few of the many wonderful exhibits we saw, starting with the steam locomotive Puffing Billy which was built in 1814 and pulled carts of coal from Wylam Colliery to the docks on the River Tyne.

A Tucker Sno-Cat used during the 1955-58 Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by explorer Dr (later Sir) Vivian Fuchs. A label carried a quote from one of the team describing how it felt to be inside it as the nose reared up and then it slid back into a hole in the ice. Not for stay-at-home types! Judging from the barriers around it, the museum half expect it to fall over again...

David was chuffed to find a model of the class of ship he served on whilst in the Royal Navy as a young man. I had helpfully shown him a model of HMS Victory but he maintains it was a later ship he was on... I've heard some of his naval stories and, believe me, they would sit well with the days of sailing ships and cutlasses!

We were due to meet the ladies for lunch so we didn't have enough time to do the museum full justice. However, as we retraced our steps back towards the entrance, the massive mill engine was working, with puffs of steam shooting out here and there and looking suitably impressive.

It did away with the need for the treadmill, which must have been a relief to all those who previously had spent their long working day doing the equivalent of climbing a ladder.

Large versions of the photos: Puffing Billy, Sno-Cat, David and ship, mill engine

London Weekend

This last weekend we had a couple of nights in London with David and Jeannie.

On the Friday night we ate in the Mermaid's Tale on Leicester Square - I can heartily recommend it - and then went to see Les Miserables at the Queen's Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue.

David and Jeannie had both seen it before but it was a first for us. The woman in the seat next to me (on the other side to Miss Franny obviously) said that made me a "virgin" and she would watch to see how I reacted. It was her 19th time and by the end of the night she had thought it the best...

We thoroughly enjoyed it. My eyes started to leak a little at one point. Maybe more than one point actually... I would have got away with it but for my neighbour nudging me heavily and shrieking "Aha!!!". As she was having to use a squeegee mop on her face I thought that a little unfair...

We visited the Science Museum and British Museums which I'll look at in other posts but the other major sight that we saw hadn't been on our itinery and to be honest I could have done without seeing it...

It's obviously fashionable to wear short waist length jackets over tights without a skirt... Anyone who remembers miniskirts in the 60s as I do will remember that only a minority of girls could do them justice.

The one we saw sporting a pair of leopard print skintight leggings covered by a jacket that hid only the top half of buttock swell should have asked her companion "Does my bum look big in this?"

The correct response, had he been brave enough, would have been to shout "Big? BIG?!? That's nowhere near an adequate word!!!"

David had a camera with him but said his wide angle lens wasn't wide enough... The sketch gives another inadequate impression.

Grace is Christened

The weekend before last included a nice family occasion as our granddaughter was christened at the church where her parents were married four and a half years ago.

Grace Margaret Statham is now a little more official than she was before! After the service wine was served for anyone in the congregation who might want to help "wet the baby's head".

Grace had been remarkably well behaved at the font, not even murmering when the water went onto her head.

Then it was back to Eddie's parents' house for eats and a celebration. There was food galore, both hot and cold, mains and afters, with more wine flowing and some champers to toast to Grace's health and prosperity.

And whilst Grace took it in her stride, Mum and Dad looked a little proud! Quite right too!

Sunderland Point

April 1983. We risked the tidal road over the salt marsh to Sunderland Point. It is a long disused port in Lancashire, at the mouth of the River Lune.

The dockside with its row of mooring posts stands forlornly next to the gravel bed of the edge of the river. Hard to imagine now as a thriving busy port thronged with ocean going ships unloading goods for transport to the mills of Manchester and the rest of Lancashire.

Sunderland Point was where the first cargoes of cotton came to, from America. In 1983 it had two curiosities that reminded us of those times. The "Cotton" Tree, seen above, is actually a kapok - a type of poplar - but it gained its name because it started to grow soon after the first bales of cotton were imported here and the locals thought it had grown from a seed blown from the bales. They didn't know that cotton grows on a bush rather than a tree.

Sadly, a few years after this photo was taken, the tree was damaged in a storm and died, having to be uprooted.

The second curiosity is Sambo's Grave, the grave of a negro slave left here c1736 by his master whilst he went inland on business. The legend is that the negro thought himself abandoned in this wild place amongst strangers and died of a broken heart. Another version is that he died after catching a disease from the locals that he had no immunity to. However he died, the locals refused to bury a non-Christian in the churchyard and the sailors buried him on the headland according to the Lonsdale Magazine of 1822: "...without either coffin or bier, being covered only with the clothes in which he died."

The entire place is a bit of a curiosity. It was Lancaster's first port, but the tidal nature of the road to it meant that goods could only be transported at low tide to and from the port. It was replaced by Glasson Dock in 1787 on the other side of the River Lune.

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Blackpool Promenade Unveiled

Finally we get to see the new Promenade in its entirety this year after all the work on the sea defences. The final section up past the Tower and towards the North Pier has now been completed and the railings removed.

I am impressed. I went down on Saturday morning, just before high tide, hoping for a spectacular sea as I have a particular photograph I need to take for a project. I was to be disappointed in that. One by the sea itself not being quite as high as I'd hoped. Then by the fact that the Central Pier is now closed to walkers from the very front of the pier. At one time in the off season you could walk up the sides and around the back of the arcade building and the pier was closed from that point.

As I crossed the road, the sun came out, leaving me in the shadow of the Golden Mile buildings but lighting up the Tower and the horizon.

There are some new sculpture features on the Central Promenade in the shape of several huge swaying "tulips". Those long stems are flexible enough to allow the heads to sail across the sky, quite a sight if you stand beneath them and look up! You find yourself looking at the slender stalks and wondering about their strength!

And there's grass. I wonder how long it will remain green because if there's one thing the new "Spanish Steps" that replaced the old sea wall will not do, it is stop the sand being blown off the beach onto and over the Promenade. Close to, the grassed areas are sand with grass sticking up through it. Green when viewed from the side, sand coloured when viewed from above. I think the Council's workmen will have their work cut out to keep those areas green, but I hope they do. Grass and a touch of something natural rather than man-made has long been missing from Blackpool's sea front.

In the distance is the new Wedding Chapel with its distinctive shape and single window that, from within, frames the Tower for those witnessing a marriage.

This is one corner of the new Comedy Carpet. A huge expanse of ground set out in columns almost like a newspaper layout except that alternate columns face north or south, allowing people to zig-zag up and down, reading catch-phrases, one-liners, jokes and sketch scripts of comedians from the days of Music Hall and Variety all the way through to the present day. You can find all of Britain's comedy greats here from the Crazy Gang, to The Office with many forgotten snippets of shows, bits of business between double act partners and the words to both Charles Penrose's Laughing Policeman and Morecambe and Wise's Bring Me Sunshine.

It was deserted almost as I walked up and down and I only saw a fraction of it in the time I had. I've been told it is wonderful to look at when there are a lot of people there because all you can hear is the sound of laughter and chuckling. Priceless.

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More Christmas Aftermath

"You're going to laugh at me now..." said a cheerful, if slightly dripping, Miss Franny as she stepped in out of the rain on her return from work.

"Why, what have you done?" I asked mildly, noting the shopping bag swinging from her hand.

"They've got long dates but they were selling them off!" she said triumphantly.

The Christmas Aftermath

"We're not eating up fast enough!"

"Wha...?" I spluttered, unwrapping my umpteenth choccy of the night.

"We're not eating up fast enough! There's tins all over the place!"

Indeed there are, when I look. Miss Franny has announced her decision to take down the Christmas decorations today when she finishes work. Under the tree, there sit two as yet unopened tins of biscuits. I open one to run a critical eye over the contents.

"I'm not sure if I fancy this one..." I say around the next sweet, trying to defend my lack of progress. "That hasn't even got chocolate on it!" I point accusingly.

"You've not touched those jam tarts I made for the last couple of days - do you not want them?" Whoa - no-win situation arising...

"And what about the mince pies? I bought you some brandy cream to go with them!"

I look down at the space where the carpet should be, but instead see the front of my jumper...

"I'll get round to them..." I trail off miserably.

"Well don't go gorging yourself on sweet stuff all the time - there's loads of special cheeses in the fridge."

"I don't seem to be hungry enough to get round to those yet..." I waver.

"And don't forget the fruit either...it's good for you!"

If I seem to be talking and moving slowly and carefully over the next few weeks...

Village Life

More photos from 1983, this time we've moved into the month of May of that year and have taken a trip up the coast to the village of Heysham, near Morecambe.

At that time during the warmer months there was always a little market down the main street and a few old fashioned reminders of a past way of life.

The huge brass beam scale allowed you to be weighed though, as people always tended to watch, it wasn't the most discreet way of finding out if you needed to diet! Worst case scenario was the operator muttering "I'll just have to nip inside for some more weights..."

Perhaps a little more discreet than the automatic talking weighing machine that shrieked "No elephants!" or "One at once!"

A little further down the street was a stall selling nettle beer. I tried some once - the most horrible concoction I've ever drunk... Though I have a friend who swears by it. She was brought up there and probably doesn't know any better... (I'm sure there'll be a comment sooner or later! Ha ha!) Anyway, I just swore at it...

Finally an "awww!" moment from further down the village.

To celebrate the first day of 2012, this is the first entry I've composed using Blogger's new interface. It handles photos and a few html bits slightly differently and there are a couple of extra things I can do that I couldn't before.

Large versions of the photos: scales 1, scales 2, nettle stall, stable door

A Small Matter of Sewage

Amongst all the revelry of Christmas, which mainly involves wondering what to say to break the awkward silences, I managed to scan a few more photos amongst which were these...

This is a sewage outfall pipe, running treated, but not quite pure, water directly into the sea at Lytham St Annes.

I have no idea whether this is still in use. In fact I suspect not given the current green agenda and our concern for the environment. But it may be. It may not still exist, because I haven't been to see it for years on years. The photos here were taken in 1983 and it's certainly not gushing out in these photos!

The sea perhaps has receded a little since it was built anyway.

There was one near the open air baths just south of Blackpool's South Pier I seem to remember. Visitors (which would include us when I was little) were often ignorant of the purpose or contents of these pipes and certainly I remember playing on them, under them and paddling in the pools near them as a child.

Some pipes ended in a rusty grill rather than with a downturn and children standing against the end would sometimes get a quick impromptu shower...

"Jimmy, don't drink that - you don't know where it's come from...

We don't know how lucky we are these days. My first house had an outside loo in a row of such that served the row of houses they belonged to. But at least it was a loo with a flush and took away the need for storing or moving...

My Great-Aunt had an outdoor privy which was at the bottom of the garden and inside the small shed was a smooth wooden seat with a hole directly over an open sewer - today you might call it a "stream" which was a frightening 40 feet below. As a small child with a small bum I was petrified of falling down that privy...

In rainy times streams took sewage down to the local river. In dry times it piled up. Farmers used their own muck to fertilise fields. I have a friend whose uncle used to do that.

Many towns had a stream known as the Shit Stream or Shit Creek.

Those who lived away from waterways had tubs that were emptied each night onto carts by the Council's nightsoil men. Can't you just see the queues for those jobs if they still existed? I suspect you always knew when one of them entered the pub... Progress.

a-Peeling We Will Go!

More domestic strife...

Last night just before tea time, I was sitting in the living room trying to make sensible conversation with my mother (never easy...) when Miss Franny shouted from the kitchen.
"I can't find the potato peeler!"

I gave up trying to make sense of the tale I was struggling with - no my brother hadn't had an accident, Mother was talking about another Frank without considering I might think of one I actually knew...

"When did you have it last? Last night?" I asked unthinkingly.
"No I was working remember? You cooked yourself chicken korma last night!"
"Oh yes... Tuesday then?"
"We went to David and Jeannie's for tea on Tuesday!" Ah, yes... and they definitely didn't ask to borrow it, because we had lasagna...

We came to the sad concusion that it may have inadvertantly been wrapped with its very last peelings on Boxing Day... The bin men came yesterday... So it was a choice of knife and very small chips or fingernails and very long ... time before chips...

The daft part is that this was one of Fran's favourite types - a potato peeler with a detachable plastic handle that when reversed turned the peeler into a knife - gradely for making chips! A flick of the wrist and chop, chop, chop, chips!

That's not daft in itself, the daft part is that, having taken ages to find one the last time we needed to buy one, we bought two so that when it wore out next we would still have one. Yes... but where did we put it...?!?

Anyway I found an old faithful Lancashire peeler hidden in the depths of a kitchen drawer.

"I can't use those!" Fran complained.

I think I'm on peeling duties for a while until I can find a replacement...

The Great Christmas Eve Bulb Blow-Out

All is not well. Miss Franny left for work this morning before 8:00am. Her last words to me were: "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Yes," I said confidently, "Put all the gear away after last night's gig, do the hoovering, make a loaf and try to get some spare bulbs to mend the Christmas tree lights."

She paused dramatically and her lips pressed together (something little girls' mothers teach them from an early age...) "You will get some bulbs, not try!" she said. "I'm not having a blacked-out tree on Christmas Day!"

Anyway I hoovered. I stowed all the band gear away. I went out but it's Christmas Eve so no sets of lights to be had. A nice man at B&Q pointed to a small almost empty box and said "These are the only spare bulbs we have - you can help yourself now, compliments of B&Q!" What a nice man! "They're all last years models..." he added.

What?!? They bring out different fittings every year?!? But our set is a good five years old! Maybe the setting has come round again...? Some of them looked a bit like them. I grabbed a small bag of six bulbs and hefted them.

"Alright if I take these?" He nodded, "Sure!" he said, "Merry Christmas".

The bulbs fit!!! The lights still don't work though...

I tried every bulb in the other set and the ones that are in the bottom half of the tree all work in the top half set but the bloody thing is still dark as a squirrel's hidey hole at the bottom.

It could be the fuse in the plug and the set is old enough to allow me to take the plug apart to get at the fuse. Something that you can't do these days because the government have convinced us we're all too stupid to tie our own shoelaces unless qualified... I've got the fuse out but can't find any others to replace it.

Fran finishes work in 25 minutes. [Gulp!] I'm going to have to confess. At least the bread maker has just beeped to say the loaf is done!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggghhhh!!! It's not risen and where it has, it's sunk in the middle and split and all dough-like inside!!!

I followed the instructions carefully! Kept salt and yeast apart! Though with its first jerk it mixes them up anyway! Measured everything minutely! Failed spectacularly...

Christmas dough balls in the dark, anyone?

The Big Wheel Cafe

In April 1983 we went out over the River Wyre to have a look for a curiosity I had wanted to find for some time.

On the Out Rawcliffe road from St Michaels was a cafe that had been once connected to a petrol station, though that had since been demolished. The cafe extension is the last surviving carriage from the Blackpool Ferris Wheel, demolished in 1928.

At the time, the carriages had been sold off to be used as summer houses and greenhouses and this one, which can still be seen by the roadside, was and is the only one left to remind us of that great Big Wheel that is such a feature of early Blackpool postcards.

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A Night in Liverpool

Last night we played at Croxteth Hall in Liverpool for a Silver Wedding and Revewal of Vows party. To all extents and purposes it was a wedding party.

It's a while since we've been to Croxteth and with new developments we took a wrong turning somewhere, but got there in good time without too much panic!

David knew the lucky man and he had arranged for a DJ to take over later in the night so that we could join the party as guests. There were a few people there that I knew as well so it was a very pleasant evening for us!

Can You Hear the Drums?

So we were just having a rare rehearsal to remind ourselves of a few new songs we had stuffed into the repertoire...

Not the most polished sound - no microphones, no sound system, the keyboard is coming from its own speakers which of course point straight up and the guitar was plugged through the computer into the hi-fi. Recorded on a Flip camera - no expense spared...

Can you hear the drums?

Memories of the Press Gangs

Just over the river, north of Lancaster is a road to a couple of small villages. Middleton and Overton are reached by a tidal road, that floods at high tide to an extent that makes them impassable.

Along this risky stretch of road is an old inn called The Golden Ball. In the days when ships used to dock at Sunderland Point with goods from the cotton fields of southern America, the regulars learned to get out quick and disperse over the fields otherwise they would be caught by gangs of men sent to find crew members for the ships. Impressment was a long standing tradition. Sanctioned too, as the Royal Navy used the Press to take protesting men forcibly away from families for years at a time. Today we would call it kidnapping. To the Navy it was simply a method of conscription. They visited so often that the pub earned the nickname of Snatchems!

The Good Old Days are a bit of a myth really...! Incidentally, if you visit: once you have parked your car, have a look at the high tide mark painted onto the car park wall. It will be above the roof of your car! Time your visit carefully!

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Wrea Green and Warton Curiosities

Once again going back to 1983 and a couple of curiosities from the Fylde countryside.

This is the old village pump at Wrea Green. Hard to imagine in England in the present day having to go outside with a bucket or other container to fetch your water from a communal source. At least water from a pump like this had a chance of being clean and pure in a small village. Pure even so is probably a relative term... From open wells, the chances of polluted water were much higher and in hot weather you had to fish out the tadpoles, frogs and newts and algae!

As far as I can tell, all traces of this have disappeared now apart from the name of the road. Mill Lane in Warton, near the gates of British Aerospace, gives a clue to what this is. There are three types of windmill. There are lots of examples of brick tower mills left in England and the Fylde and Wyre countryside manages to get into double figures. Then there are the wooden smock mills, seen mainly in the south of England. The earliest form was the post mill. A wooden building sat on a central post such as this one - for that is what it is. The post acted as a pivot in the days before they worked out how to sit a windmill's cap on a circle of cogs to rotate to keep the sails into the wind. Around this central post the entire building was rotated by means of a post sticking out of the back of the mill attached to either a horse or the miller's wife...

The mill in question had originally been built at Tarleton between Preston and Liverpool, but was then moved painstakingly to Warton where it eventually rotted away. Developments since 1983 have led to the post's removal.

Blackpool's New Wedding Venue

An unexpected treat today. We went down into Blackpool to meet up with David and Jeannie for breakfast at Quilligan's. Sean provided us with the usual excellent breakfast and we took our time over it, interrupting our eating with plenty of chatter. Then we went down onto the Promenade. The fencing and scaffolding and machinery has now disappeared from the final part of the new Promenade in front of the Tower and up to the North Pier.

On this part of the Promenade is a new rather weirdly shaped building. This is the new Register Office for weddings. The tall narrow window of the upper floor has a wonderful view of the Tower. We hadn't realised but the building was open this weekend for the public to have a look around it. Someone came out to invite us to look round and we took them up on their offer.

Despite the rather odd appearance from outside, the interior is really well thought out. Wood panelling makes it look modern and won't require redecoration every two minutes and the wedding spaces are excellent.

Thanks go to David for the photos - he had his camera on him and I didn't! We couldn't get one with the Tower view as the sun was right behind it and extremely bright!

One room looks out over the beach and sea and from the staircase there are views up the Promenade and over the sea to Cumbria and Barrow where we could see plenty of snow on the Lakeland hills!

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