Let's Have A Day Out - To Blackpool

 

Blackpool is undoubtedly one of Britain's most iconic holiday resorts. Set on the Irish Sea coast in the North West, it has a reputation as a traditional and bustling seaside town. When you think of Blackpool Seaside, you think neon lights, entertainment, sticks of rock and a golden mile of beaches perfect for sand castles and donkey rides. However, as you're strolling down the Promenade, you will be also soaking up centuries of British seaside culture!

Blackpool takes its name from the discoloured waters of 'le pull'. That was the discoloured stream draining Marton Mere and Marton Moss through peat lands. The stream ran alongside Blackpool Old Road and went into the sea near the present Manchester Square. The name 'Blackpoole' first appears in the 1602 Bispham parish baptismal register. 'Foxhall' was the first house to be built in the area by Edward Tyldesley, the Squire of Myerscough, towards the end of the 1600s. Along with other resorts along the coast, the well-to-do in society were attracted by the health giving properties of sea air being the main reason for visiting Blackpool and by the late 1780s four large hotels were catering for them. At this time the visitors also enjoyed horse riding on the beach and walking on the six yards wide promenade as they also enjoyed archery facilities and bowling greens with additional holiday accommodation in the fifty or so houses along the seafront, some of which were residential. But in 1781, a new road gave better access for visitors travelling from Manchester by stagecoach, meaning Blackpool saw visitors from lots of new towns around Lancashire and as its reputation began to grow, more and more coaches from farther away made the journey to the seaside resort. However the railway is what really changed everything for the town and the even greater traffic of holiday goers led to the installation of proper facilities and attractions, including the Pleasure Beach. Development of the resort began in earnest in the early 1800s when Henry Banks, 'The Father of Blackpool',  took matters into his own hands when in 1819 he purchased the Lane Ends estate and soon built the first holiday cottages. In 1837 his son-in-law built the first assembly rooms, the bulk of which still stands on the north-west corner of Victoria and Bank Hey Streets.

On the 9th of  December 1836, William Henry Cocker was born on Hygiene Terrace, in a house that his father had built. The boy grew up to be perhaps the most influential man in the growth of the town of Blackpool. His father, John Cocker, had already built the first purpose-built place of entertainment, the Victoria Promenade, then in 1851, soon after marrying the daughter of Henry Banks, William bought Bank Hey House at the top of Victoria Street as he had inherited all the valuable land and buildings of Henry Banks. After becoming a general practitioner, he lived in a bungalow on Bond Street, before moving to his own bungalow, 'Bloomfield', in 1888, on Spen Gap Lane which in 1928 was renamed Bloomfield Road after his house. He finally moved to Whitegate Drive. In 1875, he offered Bank Hey and its adjoining land for the building of the Winter Gardens and part of  the house still stands inside the Winter Gardens today, visible in the walls of the Mazzei Cafe.  In October 1938 the old Opera House was demolished and the third and current Opera House replaced its predecessor in 1939, with a classic Art Deco design. Opened by Jessie Matthews and her husband Sonnie Hale, there followed the revue; 'Turned out Nice Again' with George Formby. Over the years the Opera House would welcome some of the biggest names in showbusiness, beloved musicals and, of course,Blackpool's very own Summer Season spectaculars.

After selling his property company to the Blackpool Tower Company, later to house the Tower, in 1876, William became the town's first mayor and in 1896, its first Freeman. He died on the 14th of April 1911, being buried on the 18th of April in St John’s Church yard. Erected in 1926, the Cocker Tower in Stanley Park was built in his honour. The 1890s saw a huge entertainment boom to provide for the estimated 250,000 visitors that the resort could accommodate and in 1889 the original Opera House was built in the Winter Gardens complex before the iconic Tower opened in 1894. When it opened, Blackpool Tower was the tallest man made structure in the British Empire. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower and standing at 158 metres it is the 125th-tallest freestanding tower in the world and incorporates the Tower Circus, the Tower Ballroom, and roof gardens. The first Pier, The North Pier, made in cast iron on screwed piles was the first to be built in 1863. The Central Pier followed but only became well used in 1870 when Robert Bickerstaffe introduced open-air dancing for the 'working classes'. The country's first permanent electric street tramway opened on the 29th of September 1885 running from Cocker Street to South Shore and in 1893 Victoria Pier, now called South Pier opened.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach was originally the place where gypsies and fairground artists had gathered to the land at South Beach, however they were moved on in 1910 to allow for the expansion of the amusement park. This had been founded on the 23rd of April 1896 by WG Bean as the Pleasure Beach Company. It was to be an 'American style amusement park, where adults could feel like children again.' In 1903, 40 acres of land near to Star Inn was purchased and a couple of years later, in 1905, the site, first called the Pleasure Beach, was originally literally on the beach before in 1923 land was reclaimed to form a proper seafront.

Lighting up the town since 1879, Blackpool Illuminations was first conceived when the council devoted £5,000 to experiment with the idea of electric street lighting. It began with eight lamps on 60ft-tall poles along the seafront before Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897 saw the first illuminated tram travel on the seafront. In 1912 Princess Louise (Queen Victoria's daughter) visited Blackpool to open the new promenade at the side of the Metropole Hotel and the first static illuminations were erected here to welcome her – and described as 'artificial sunshine'. The display of around 10,000 lights went down a treat and with thousands coming to see the display, the council decided to display the lights again that September. But the displays were put on hold for a whopping eleven years when the First World War began and there was a further break in the display for World War 11,  but they've shone every other year since.

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