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Blackpool,
Lancashire
Blackpool is a seaside town with 7 miles (11km) of sandy beach and a
population of around 144,000 inhabitants in the county of Lancashire. It is
located on the Irish Sea coast between the Ribble and Wyre river estuaries,
12 miles (19km) north of Southport, 14 miles (22km) north-west of Preston,
20 miles (32km) south-west of Morecambe and 61 miles (98km) west of Leeds.
In medieval times Blackpool emerged as a few farmsteads on the coast, the name
coming from "le pull", a stream that drained Marton Mere and Marton Moss into
the sea close to what is now Manchester Square. The stream ran through peat
bogs that discoloured the water, so the name for the area became "Black
Poole". The first house of any substance, Foxhall, was built toward the end of
the 17th century by Edward Tyldesley (1635-1685), the Squire of Myerscough and
son of royalist Sir Thomas Tyldesley (1612-1651).
Until the middle of the 18th century, Blackpool was simply a coastal hamlet,
but the practice of sea bathing to cure diseases was becoming fashionable
among the wealthier classes, and visitors began making the arduous trek to
Blackpool for that purpose. In 1781, Thomas Clifton (1727-1783) and Sir Henry
Hoghton (1728-1795) built a private road to Blackpool and a regular stagecoach
service from Manchester and Halifax was established. A few amenities,
including four hotels, an archery stall and bowling greens, were developed,
and the town grew slowly. The 1801 census records the town's population at 473
inhabitants.
The most significant event in the early growth of the town occurred in 1846,
with the completion of a branch line to Blackpool from Poulton on the main
Preston and Wyre Joint Railway line from Preston to Fleetwood. Around this
time, Fleetwood declined as a resort, as its founder and principal financial
backer, Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood (1801-1866), went bankrupt. In contrast,
Blackpool boomed. A sudden influx of visitors, arriving by rail, provided the
motivation for entrepreneurs to build accommodation and create new
attractions, leading to more visitors and a rapid cycle of growth throughout
the 1850s and 1860s. By 1851, the town's population had risen to over 2,500.
The growth was intensified by the practice among the Lancashire cotton mill
owners of closing the factories for a week every year to service and repair
machinery. These became known as ‘wakes weeks’. Each town's mills would close
for a different week, allowing Blackpool to manage a steady and reliable
stream of visitors over a prolonged period in the summer.
In 1863, the North Pier was completed, rapidly becoming a centre of attraction
for elite visitors. Central Pier was completed in 1868, with a theatre and a
large open-air dance floor. The town expanded southward beyond what is today
known as the Golden Mile, towards South Shore, and South Pier was completed in
1893, making Blackpool the only town in the United Kingdom with three piers.
In 1878, the Winter Gardens complex opened, incorporating ten years later the
Opera House, said to be the largest in Britain outside London.
Much of Blackpool's growth and character from the 1870s was due to the town's
pioneering use of electrical power. In 1879, it became the first municipality
in the world to have electric street lighting, as large parts of the promenade
were wired. The lighting and its accompanying pageants reinforced Blackpool's
status as the North of England's most prominent holiday resort, and its
specifically working class character. It was the forerunner of the present-day
Blackpool Illuminations. In 1885, one of the world's first electric tramways
was laid down as a conduit line running from Cocker Street to Dean Street on
the Promenade. The line was operated by the Blackpool Electric Tramway Company
until 1892 when their lease expired and Blackpool Corporation took over
running the line. A further line was added in 1895, from Manchester Square
along Lytham Road to South Shore, and the line was extended north to
Fleetwood. In 1899, the conduit system was replaced by overhead wires. The
tramway has remained in continuous service to this day and is the United
Kingdom’s only surviving first generation tramway stretching 11 miles (18km)
from the airport at Squires Gate all the way to Fleetwood.
By the 1890s, the town had a permanent population of 35,000 but could
accommodate 250,000 holidaymakers. The number of annual visitors, many staying
for a week, was estimated at three million. The decade also saw the opening of
two of the town's most prominent buildings, the Grand Theatre on Church
Street, and Blackpool Tower on the Promenade.
Documents have been found to suggest that the reason Blackpool escaped heavy
damage in World War II (1939-1945) was that Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) had
earmarked the town to remain a place of leisure after his planned invasion.
Despite this, on 11th September 1940, German bombs fell near Blackpool North
railway station and eight people were killed in nearby houses in Seed Street.
This site today is occupied by the new Town Hall offices and a Sainsbury's
supermarket. No plaque has ever been erected to remember the injured or dead.
The rise of package holidays in the late 1960s and 1970s took many of
Blackpool's traditional visitors abroad, where the weather was more reliably
warm and dry, and improved road communications, epitomised by the construction
of the M55 motorway in 1975, made Blackpool more feasible as a day trip rather
than an overnight stay. Despite this, the town’s economy, however, flourishes
relatively undiversified and firmly rooted in the tourism sector and remains
the most popular seaside resort in the country. However, the town has suffered
a serious drop in numbers of visitors which have fallen from 17 million in
1992 to 10 million today.
The three main tourist hotspots in Blackpool originally appeared as part of
the flourishing tourist industry. The first is Blackpool Tower which opened in
1894 and has been a dominant landmark of the Blackpool skyline since that
time. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, it is 518ft 4in (158m) in
height (roughly half the size of its more famous original) and houses a
complex of leisure facilities, entertainment venues and restaurants, including
the world-famous Tower Ballroom and Tower Circus, at its base.
The second, Pleasure Beach Blackpool, originates back to around 1910 and
boasts rides including the Pepsi Max Big One which, between 1994 and 1996, was
the world's fastest and tallest complete circuit rollercoaster. It was the
country's most popular free attraction with 6 million visitors a year but has
lost over a million visitors since 1998 and has recently introduced a Ł5
entrance fee.
The third is the North Pier, the northern-most of Blackpool's three piers,
which includes a small shopping arcade, a small tramway and the North Pier
Theatre. The pier end also used to have a helicopter pad, but this was damaged
in a Christmas storm in 1997 and collapsed into the sea. |
