Blackpool to Cleveleys Walk

Posted on by modernmoocher

I have previously written about the Blackpool North Shore here and here.

Observing the shore from the promenade.

The shore was designated as a conservation area in 2018.

Yesterday, Wednesday 21st May 2025, the sun was shining and the tide was out, I decided to walk along the sands, and look towards the land.

To the right the Imperial Hotel – 1866-7 by Clegg and Knowles of Manchester, wing added 1875 by Mangnall and Littlewood. 

The hotel was established in 1867. Charles Dickens stayed at the hotel in 1869. In 1904, the hotel was extended with the addition of a large neo-baroque style dining room. In 1912, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll stayed at the hotel.In the mid 20th century, Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon and The Beatles stayed at the hotel. Queen Elizabeth II stayed at the hotel when visiting Blackpool. In 1985, Margaret Thatcher celebrated her 60th birthday in the hotel. In 2002, US President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair stayed at the hotel for the Labour party conference.

The hotel is Grade II listed.

Wikipedia

Join us at The Imperial Hotel Blackpool for an unforgettable experience where entertainment,  family fun, and group leisure come together. Book now and start creating memories that will last a lifetime. 

Grand Hotel – the hotel was built as the Pembroke Hotel in 1982, became the Hilton Hotel in 1999 and The Grand Hotel in 2017

The hotel was built next to the site of the Derby Baths 1939 – architect: John Charles Robinson who between 1920-1944 designed many of Blackpool’s landmark civic buildings including libraries, schools, swimming baths, leisure facilities and tourist infrastructure.

Sadly, the baths were demolished in 1990.

To the right the Savoy Hydro Hotel.

The Savoy Hotel, just north of Gynn Square, is one of the series of large red brick and red terracotta hotels built around the turn of the century. The architect was TG Lumb and the hotel opened in 1915; the sun lounge in Hathern’s cream faience was added in 1935 by Lumb and Walton.

Architects of Greater Manchester

The Cliffs Hotel started in 1921 – architect Halstead Best substantially rebuilt and enlarged the building 1936–37 and added an underground carpark

Castle Casino – architect: Arthur Hindle 1906

Arthur Knowles built the Castle at 64 Queens Promenade North Shore for his wife, who unfortunately stayed in France. The couple stayed in the house for a mere nine months during 1929. Apart from housing Belgian refugees during World War 1, it stayed empty until 1935. It then opened briefly as an old people’s home, before being bought by Lawrence Wright – AKA Horatio Nicholls, as his home.

Wright sold it in 1941, and after several years as the home of the Blackpool and Fylde Motor Club, it became the Castle Casino of today in 1965, first owned by wrestler Jack Pye, who moved to Blackpool in 1950. It has had various identities, and was last taken over in 2005, now being known as the Genting Club – part of a national chain of that name.

Former Miners Convalescent Home 1925-27 – architects: Bradshaw Gass & Hope, Grade II listed 

Converted to apartments in 2005 – trading as Admiral Point.

Norbreck Castle Hotel originally built as a large private country house in 1869, it was bought around the end of the 19th century by JH Shorrocks, who used the house to entertain friends and colleagues at lavish weekend parties. The popularity of these parties led to Shorrocks running them on a commercial basis by taking paying guests.

The S Block by architect WH Longworth 1912 – the N Block by Halstead Best 1933-34.

In the 1970’s the Motel wing was added along with, the large Norcalympia exhibition hall, the name was changed from the Norbreck Hydro to Norbreck Castle.

European Regional Development Fund cash of £450,000 was granted towards a regeneration project on Cleveleys Promenade. Wyre Council improved 64,000 sq ft of the promenade to create a more attractive place for visitors to the town. The latest work complements the £20m sea defence installation.

Broadbent Studio worked collaboratively from the outset with Wyre Council, Ferguson & McIlveen and Faber Maunsell in 2008, to create an exciting new promenade and sea defence scheme for the coastline at Cleveleys.

The Sea Swallow is a 10m tall structure that brings to life Wyre’s Mythic Coast storybook ‘The Sea Swallow’. The coated aluminium sculpture, has the feel of ‘a book coming to life’, with the two sea swallows symbolic of the town’s protectors emerging from the page. 

Sea Fishing – North Shore Blackpool

Posted on by modernmoocher

I love to walk the long concrete promenade along the North Shore.

In fact I’ve previously written all about it.

One very sunny post lockdown day I walked along again.

I was taken by the strung out procession of anglers casting from the sea wall.

So I took some pictures.

Crazy Golf – Postcards From Blackpool

Posted on by modernmoocher

This in so many senses is where it all began – my first encounter with the visual arts was through my Aunty Alice’s postcard album. Predating visits to Manchester City Art Gallery in my mid-teens, I was lost in a world of post WW1 printed ephemera, rendered less ephemeral by careful collection and collation. Sitting entranced for hours and hours absorbing the photography, text and illustration of hundreds of unseen hands.

This is North Shore Blackpool – behind the Metropole in the early 60s.

The colour is muted by the then state of the art colour reproduction, the holiday dress is constrained by the codes of the day. Light cotton frocks and wide brimmed sun hats, shirts tucked in belted slacks, sandals and shorts – purely for the pre-teens.

The focus and locus of fun is located on the prom and what better way to squander a moment or eighteen, than with a pleasurable round of crazy golf. Municipal Modernist frivolity rendered corporeal in corporation concrete, repainted annually ahead of the coming vacationers.

Domesticated Brutalism to soften the soul.

And there can be no better away to inform the awaiting world of your capricious coastal antics than a picture postcard, so playfully displayed on the corner shop carousel – 10p a pop.

Stopping to chuckle at the Bamforth’s mild mannered filth, yet finally purer of heart, opting for the purely pictorial.

Man and boy and beyond I have visited Blackpool – a day, week or fortnight here and there, the worker’s working week temporarily suspended with a week away.

Times have now changed and the new nexus is cash, all too incautiously squandered – Pleasure Beach and pub replacing the beach as the giddy stags and hens collide in an intoxicating miasma of flaming Sambuca, Carling, Carlsberg and cheap cocktails – for those too cash strapped for Ibiza.

The numbers are up – 18 times nothing is nothing – each year as I revisit, the primarily primary colour paint wears a little thinner in the thin salt air and the whining westerly wind, of the all too adjacent Irish Sea.

Overgrown and underused awaiting the kids and grown ups that forever fail to show. On one visit the sunken course had become the home of the daytime hard drinkers, they suggested we refurbish and run the course as a going concern. I declined lacking the time, will and capital for such a crazy enterprise.

The starting has finally stopped.