Category Archives: Fun Palaces: the history and architecture of the entertainment industry

The well-kept secret of St Anne’s-on-Sea

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Tram shelter, St Annes-on-Sea

Tram shelter, St Annes-on-Sea

I made a flying visit to St Annes-on-Sea to present my lecture ‘Beside the Seaside:  the architecture of seaside resorts’ to the newly-founded Fylde Decorative & Fine Arts Society a few days ago.  For a society that’s been up and running for less than a year they’ve achieved an enormous amount – over 200 members, an award-winning website, visits to Yorkshire and Krakow, Young Arts sponsorship, a church-recording project and strong connections with other organisations in the region.  They meet at the United Reformed Church, St Georges Road, on the first Wednesday of each month from October to July, and have room for further new members.  See http://www.fyldedfas.org.uk/index.htm.

Kate Cartmell, the Programme Secretary, paid me a warmly-appreciated compliment when she pointed out that my description of Blackpool as a seaside resort “gave the place dignity”.  Sometimes people think I’m joking when I describe the Tower Ballroom as the finest piece of rococo decoration in the North West:  I was heartened that Kate recognised I wasn’t being ironical.

I wish I’d said a little more to place Lytham St Annes into the context of the history of the British seaside.  The Fylde coast tells the whole story, in essence, of how railways and, to a lesser extent, steamships, drove the holiday industry.

The landowner Peter Hesketh Fleetwood gave his name and lost his fortune to the wildly over-ambitious resort of Fleetwood, which was quickly overtaken by the small landowners and businessmen who made Blackpool the premier resort of the North West.

This process was helped by the decision of another landowning family, the Cliftons, to sell up in Blackpool and develop Lytham as a superior, “select” alternative that they could tightly control.  When the Cliftons were in need of cash in the teeth of an agricultural depression, they sold to a developer the land on which St Annes was built from 1875.  Meanwhile, further south, two more landowning families, the Scarisbricks and the Bolds (the latter related by marriage to the Fleetwoods), worked jointly to build spacious, elegant Southport.

To the far north, on the Lune estuary, another miscellaneous collection of landowners threw together Morecambe, in its day phenomenally successful as “Bradford-by-the-sea” and now less a resort than a dormitory for Lancaster.

You can walk round each place and pick up its character very quickly – Fleetwood, St Annes and Southport planned with a ruler and set-square; Morecambe and Blackpool strung together piecemeal;  Lytham, carefully constructed at the gates of the big house, Lytham Hall.

A quick trawl through the new Pevsner (Lancashire North) compels me to return to Lytham St Annes to explore the astonishing quality and variety of its architecture.

Watch this space…

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on seaside architecture, Away from it all:  the heritage of holiday resorts, Beside the Seaside:  the architecture of British coastal resorts, Blackpool’s Seaside Heritage and Yorkshire’s Seaside Heritage, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2013 Lancashire’s Seaside Heritage tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Lost resort in Yorkshire

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Withernsea Pier

Withernsea Pier

I’ve always had a soft spot for Withernsea.  It really shouldn’t exist.

Most of the two villages of Withernsea and Owthorne had disappeared into the sea by the nineteenth century, when Anthony Bannister, a Hull fish-merchant and ship-owner with capital to spare, promoted the Hull & Holderness Railway and – to provide somewhere for visitors to stay when they got off the train – built what became the Queen’s Hotel at the Withernsea terminus in 1854-5.  The railway was unsuccessful because it had only one track and was taken over by a larger company in 1862.

In 1870 Bannister tried again to generate income by founding the Withernsea Pier, Promenade, Gas & General Improvement Co.  The pier was completed in 1877, the year before Bannister died, but in 1882 the Pier Company went bankrupt.

The pier was damaged by storms and collisions in 1880, 1882, 1890 and 1893.  In 1903 the owners gave up and demolished what was left, leaving the twin castellated towers that remain as an ornament to the promenade.  It’s now commemorated by a memorably original seat for weary passers-by.

The geology at Withernsea is so unstable that the lighthouse was built several hundred yards inland, where the bedrock could support a tall enough structure.  Its light guided shipping from 1894 to 1976.  Now it’s a charming little museum with an excellent cup of tea [http://www.withernsealighthouse.co.uk].

It contains a tribute to the actress Kay Kendall, who was born in Withernsea.  Her famous trumpet-playing scene in Genevieve (1953) was dubbed by the jazz trumpeter Kenny Baker:  at the time the film was made neither of them apparently realised that the other came from Withernsea, perhaps because of the five years’ difference in their ages.

It’s not a very big place.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on seaside architecture, Away from it all:  the heritage of holiday resorts, Beside the Seaside:  the architecture of British coastal resorts, Blackpool’s Seaside Heritage and Yorkshire’s Seaside Heritage, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

The above image is available as a greetings card, price £2.95 for one or £11.95 for a pack of five, or as a notelet to order. For the entire range of Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times greetings cards, please click here.

Lost Empire in Cleethorpes

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Empire Theatre, Cleethorpes

Empire Theatre, Cleethorpes

The Empire Theatre, Cleethorpes is virtually invisible.  When I checked out the resort to run a visit there I discovered textbook references to its existence but it took a great deal of finding. The building stands on the sea front and attracts visitors as an amusement arcade.  It doesn’t have the obvious decorative faience façade of a Frank Matcham variety theatre, and indeed the only exterior clue to its origin is round the back, where a very tall doorway in the back wall is clearly the scene dock.

When I contacted the owner, Rosie Armitage, she was more than ready to give me access and to allow me to bring groups to see the remains of the interior.  What was the stalls is now unrecognisable, but at balcony level – amidst the paraphernalia of Lazer Quest – the proscenium arch and plasterwork remain largely intact, though painted matt black and only visible under working lights.

It’s a spooky time-warp experience to find a late-1890s interior, as it were frozen in time and virtually forgotten.

The place has its share of theatrical stories. 

Sidney Carlton, the lessee in 1899, was “known as much for his frequent court appearances as for his management of the theatre”, and left town abruptly in August of that year. 

A subsequent proprietor, James Carter-White, a chemist who was also a local councillor and a Freemason, established Cleethorpes’ first independent Masonic lodge in the upper rooms. 

The most illustrious performer to appear at the Empire was Charles Coburn, “the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo”.  

The place was still playing to full houses as late as the 1950s, but abruptly closed after Jimmy James & Co played there in 1960, and has been an amusement arcade now for nearly as long as it was a theatre.

Update:  Since I first posted this article in May 2010, Lazer Quest has gone and there are admirable schemes to reclaim the building.  See About us – The Empire Cleethorpes and Empire Theatre, Cleethorpes, England – shared interest | Facebook.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Fun Palaces:  the history and architecture of the entertainment industry please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.