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

Buxton’s Crescent

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Assembly Room, former Great Hotel, The Crescent, Buxton, Derbyshire

Assembly Room, former Great Hotel, The Crescent, Buxton, Derbyshire

The major health-resort of the Roman Empire was Aquae Sulis, which we know simply as Bath.  The second most important was Aquae Arnemetiae, high in the bleak Derbyshire hills, which is now the town of Buxton.

Whereas the spring-water of Bath steams at a temperature of 116°F, Buxton water is comparatively tepid at 81-2°F.  If you’re in Buxton, you don’t have to buy the stuff in a bottle;  you can simply fill your flask for free at St Ann’s Well opposite the Crescent.

The fifth Duke of Devonshire (1748-1811), taciturn husband of the effervescent Georgiana (respectively played by Ralph Fiennes and Keira Knightley in the film The Duchess, 2008), reputedly used a single year’s profits from his copper-mine at Ecton, Staffordshire, to set up Buxton as a rival to Bath.

He employed the architect John Carr of York from 1780 to 1790 to build a crescent of hotels and lodging-houses, resembling John Wood II’s Royal Crescent at Bath.  Whereas John Wood had the advantage of an eminence overlooking the Avon valley and sufficient space for his expansive half-ellipse of thirty residences, Carr had to incorporate the thermal spring on a cramped site at the bottom of a steep hill.

Carr made the best of it, and designed a semicircular crescent with an arcade that offers protection in a town that famously catches the worst of the weather at every season.  Because of its low-lying position, the building is visible from all angles, especially by arriving travellers, so the cornice continues right round the building, hiding all the roof features except the cruciform chimney-stacks.

From no viewpoint is it apparent that the two return blocks are asymmetrical:  the east wing has seven bays, while the west has only five.  The wedge-shaped lodging houses are arranged with three storeys facing into the Crescent and four behind, so that the arrangement of rooms and staircases is curious and complex, to maximise the flexibility of accommodation for first- and second-class guests.

John Carr also gave Buxton, for the first time in its history, an imposing formal assembly room as part of the Great Hotel in the eastern pavilion.  Carr’s command of three-dimensional planning challenged his masons:  he was obliged to make a full-size model of the assembly room staircase which sits within the spandrel where the curved south wall joins the rectangular east wing.

This beautiful Adamesque assembly room with plasterwork by James Henderson Jnr of York was, in the 1970s, beautifully restored as the local branch library, until it became clear that the weight of the books and bookcases was threatening the stability of the floor.  The library was quickly removed, and from 1993 onwards the rest of the building gradually fell derelict.

The whole exterior of the Crescent has been restored, but schemes to renew the interior and bring the building back into use have repeatedly stalled.  The latest project is detailed at   http://www.highpeak.gov.uk/hp/news/historic-agreement-paves-way-for-crescent-development.

The Buxton Crescent has stood empty for too long.  It’s a building that deserves to be enjoyed.

The 72-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Derbyshire-based Taking the Waters:  the history of spas & hydros tour, with text, photographs 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.

Mary, Queen of Scots slept here

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Old Hall Hotel, Buxton, Derbyshire

Old Hall Hotel, Buxton, Derbyshire

When I lectured to the Cavendish Decorative & Fine Arts Society in Buxton [http://www.cavendishnadfas.org.uk/index.html], I was taken for an enjoyable lunch to the Old Hall Hotel [http://www.oldhallhotelbuxton.co.uk], where the food was as excellent as the service was leisurely.  I chose wild boar burger which, to be honest, tasted much like any other hand-made burger – very good indeed.

The Old Hall is at the heart of historic Buxton.  It stands on the site of the Roman bath and medieval holy well, and was constructed as a typical Midland four-storey high house [compare with North Lees Hall, Hathersage] by George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury who recovered from an attack of gout after trying the “baynes of Buckstones” in 1569.  It had a battlemented roof and contained a great chamber and lodgings for up to thirty guests.

Here he entertained most of the greatest names in Elizabethan politics – Lord Burghley (1575), Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (five times between 1576 and 1584) and his older brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick (1577).  Queen Elizabeth herself never travelled this far north, but did receive a delivery of Buxton water, which gave her no benefit:  it was said not to travel well.

Lord Shrewsbury was the fourth husband of the formidable Bess of Hardwick and the custodian of the captive Mary, Queen of Scots, who stayed here nine times between 1573 and 1584.  Caught between his domineering wife, the duplicitous Scottish queen and the volatile English one, he lived an unenviable life.

Buxton Old Hall was substantially rebuilt in 1670 and again in the late eighteenth century, but its core survives within the present-day hotel, as becomes obvious when you move from room to room through thick walls and odd doorways.

Celia Fiennes hated it when she visited in 1697:

Its the largest house in the place tho’ not very good… the beer they allow at the meales is so bad that very little can be dranke…if you have not Company enough of your own to fill a room they will be ready to put others into the same chamber, and sometymes they are so crowded that three must lye in a bed;  few people stay above two or three nights its so inconvenient:  we staid two nights by reason one of our Company was ill but it was sore against our wills, for there is no peace or quiet…

Needless to say, it’s much improved over the past three hundred-odd years.  They take their time over the boar burgers, and the result is worth waiting for.

The 72-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Derbyshire-based Taking the Waters:  the history of spas & hydros tour, with text, photographs 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.

Flicks in the sticks

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The Kinema-in-the-Woods, Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire

The Kinema-in-the-Woods, Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire

Photo:  Janet Miles

The March/April 2012 edition of the Cinema Theatre Association Bulletin mentions the then forthcoming ninetieth anniversary of the Kinema-in-the-Woods, Woodhall Spa – one of the most eccentric and evocative film-going experiences in England.

The Pavilion Cinema opened in a converted cricket pavilion in 1922 and only later became known as the Kinema-in-the-Woods.  It has always retained the original Greek spelling, derived from the word for ‘motion’.

The building started out as a cricket pavilion, and because the roof supports are integral to the structure, films have always been shown by back-projection of surprising clarity.

According to a 1937 advertisement, “while furnished with comfortable plush seats, deck chairs and cushions are provided for those who appreciate them”.  The deck chairs on the front six rows were priced at 1s 6d, threepence dearer than the best fixed seats in the house.

The Kinema was operated for half a century by its founder, Major C C Allport:  when he applied for his fiftieth licence in 1972 the magistrates waived the fee.

By the 1980s it had become a precious survival, and its next owner, James Green, installed the Compton organ from the Super Cinema, Charing Cross Road, to provide concerts in addition to current-release movies.  Its console is mounted on the lift from the former Regent Cinema, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.

Now there is a second screen, Kinema Too, opened in 1994, to complement the original auditorium and offer a wider variety of films.

Woodhall Spa is an unlikely spot to see first-release movies.  But after all, Woodhall Spa is an unlikely spot.

The history of the Kinema-in-the-Woods can be found in Edward Roy Mayor, The Kinema in the Woods: the story of Woodhall Spa’s unique cinema (J W Green Cinemas 2002) and at http://www.thekinemainthewoods.co.uk/history.

 

Unlikely place for a spa

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Memorial to 617 Squadron, "The Dambusters", Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire

Memorial to 617 Squadron, “The Dambusters”, Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire

The sleepy Lincolnshire resort of Woodhall Spa owes its origins to coal – or rather the absence of coal.

The concealed coalfield in the east of Nottinghamshire developed only as far as the River Trent, east of which the coal measures dipped inaccessibly far underground.

A land agent called Edward Bogg, however, believing that the presence of oil shales in the Bain valley indicated the presence of coal, dug a hundred-yard trial shaft near Kirkstead, barely a mile south of the later spa, in 1819. 

Another local land agent, John Parkinson of Bolingbroke, began an exploratory shaft that reached four hundred yards down without reaching the coal measures.  Local legend says that the sinkers took coal down the shaft to “seed” the workings, in order to perpetuate their employment.

Subsequently, the water that flooded this abandoned shaft was found to contain six times more iodine and bromine than any known British mineral water, and in 1839 the lord of the manor, Thomas Hotchkin, installed a brick-lined well and a steam pumping-engine, opened a pump room and bath-house, and built the Victoria Hotel.  All this cost nearly £30,000.

The little community that grew around Hotchkin’s enterprise took the name Woodhall Spa.  Its publicity labelled it “the English Kreuznach”;  a local newspaper termed it the “Modern Bethesda”.

The Lincoln-Boston railway, opened in 1848, passed nearby at Kirkstead;  the branch to Horncastle, opened in 1855, brought a station to the spa with a level crossing cutting diagonally across the main street.

A syndicate of entrepreneurs set out to develop the place in the 1880s, and reported visitor numbers increased dramatically from 15,182 in 1886 to 47,700 within three years.

However, Kelly’s Directory of 1892 comments, “The numerous baths and dressing-rooms more than suffice to meet immediate wants…”

In time, golf became more important as a visitor attraction than water treatments, and despite the brave advertising efforts of the London & North Eastern Railway [http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/woodhall_spa/index.shtml] visitor traffic dwindled and Woodhall  Spa became a dormitory.  The spa itself lingered on until eventually the well collapsed in 1983.

The town’s proudest claim to fame is its association with the celebrated 617 Squadron, the “Dam Busters”, whose poignant memorial commemorates Operation Chastise, their bombing of the Möhne and Edersee Dams on May 16th-17th 1943:  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dambstrajj.gif].

The oddest, and most rewarding visitor attraction in this tiny town is the miniscule corrugated-iron Cottage Museum (brought to its present site in 1887) [http://www.cottagemuseum.co.uk].  It’s worth seeking out.

The community website is at http://www.woodhallspa.org.  For information on 617 Squadron, see http://www.dambusters.org.uk.

 

The gaiety of nations

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Gaiety Theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man: marquee

Gaiety Theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man: marquee

A couple of years ago I was invited to the Gaiety Theatre, Douglas to see the Douglas Choral Society’s production of Les Misérables, which is not my favourite piece of musical drama.  After three hours of Gallic posturing and carrying on (which theatre-folk refer to as The Glums, in tribute to the 1950s radio-programme Take It From Here), I commented to my host, my Isle of Man friend John, that though it wasn’t my favourite show I imagined we’d seen the best theatrical production on the Gaiety stage for at least ten years.

The Gaiety is a delightful theatre, one of Frank Matcham’s best survivors.  Dating from 1900, the heyday of the Manx tourist boom, it has superb fibrous plasterwork by De Jong & Co, extravagant house-tabs dripping with ropes and tassels, and the only surviving example of a Corsican trap – an essential requirement for Dionysius Lardner Boucicault’s melodrama, The Corsican Brothers (1852), which doesn’t often get an airing.

This gorgeous jewel of Victorian entertainment struggled for years to earn its keep as a cinema, and was rescued by the Isle of Man Government in 1971.  It could have been pulled down, but was restored in 1976.  It’s by far the most attractive cultural venue on the island, and it serves local communities and holiday visitors in conjunction with the adjacent Villa Marina.

Early this year John’s then-teenage son, Matthew, texted me to ask if he needed to see Miss Saigon.  Yes, I said, most definitely.  Indeed, I said, I’d get on a boat to see it if it was performed by the Douglas Choral Society.

Miss Saigon (1989) is the follow-up work to Les Misérables (1980), and was Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s second successful assault on the West End and Broadway.  It’s based on Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.  It’s a Kleenex job.  Complete with helicopter.

So I enjoyed a captivating evening in Frank Matcham’s stalls, watching the best of Manx theatrical talent pull out all the stops.  Rebecca Lawrence (Kim), Jonathan Sleight (Chris), David Artus (Engineer), Alex Toohey (John) and Kristene Sutcliffe (Ellen) gave performances which were utterly indistinguishable from the professional theatre, and they were backed up by scores of on-stage, back-stage and front-of-house workers.

What more could anyone ask of a Saturday night? – Matthew’s twentieth-birthday dinner at the excellent Coast Bar & Brasserie of the Claremont Hotel [http://www.sleepwellhotels.com/hotels/isle_of_man/claremont/restaurant.htm], the best show in town in a Frank Matcham theatre, and walking home along the gently curving Loch Promenade looking out to Douglas Bay.

This is what Dr Johnson meant by “the harmless stock of human pleasure”.

The Gaiety Theatre website is at http://www.gov.im/villagaiety.  The Douglas Choral Union is at http://www.douglaschoralunion.im/index.php.

The 72-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 Manx Heritage tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology 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.

Thanks to bingo

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Former Regent Theatre, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

Former Regent Theatre, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

I’m indebted to Ian Hardy, of Great Yarmouth Borough Council, for prompting me to seek out the former Regent Theatre on Regent Street, now Mecca Bingo.

Tracy Utting, the Manager, was very willing to allow my Norfolk’s Seaside Heritage tour-group to visit before the club opened, and her colleague Kerry took great trouble to show us as much as possible of the historic parts of the building.

The Regent has a sophisticated classical façade, with huge Ionic columns and a Diocletian window;  within is an impressive staircase, now altered, the former café with an extensive plaster frieze of putti and garlands, and the auditorium which is decorated with rococo plasterwork, with boxes supported by cast-iron columns.

It was built in 1914 for Francis Holmes Cooper, a Wisbech estate-agent who owned a chain of theatres and cinemas across East Anglia, most if not all of them designed, like the Yarmouth Regent, by Francis Burdett Ward.  It closed as a cinema in September 1982, and ever since has operated as a bingo club.

The bingo industry has proved a magnificent custodian for so much of Britain’s entertainment heritage.  From the Blackpool Grand Theatre to the Wakefield Opera House, from the Grade I Tooting Granada Cinema in South London, still operating as a bingo club, to the magnificently restored Stockport Plaza Cinema – any or all of these might not have survived without the proceeds of bingo to keep the building going.

Kerry, as she showed us everywhere from the boxes to the basement (still containing an industrial-sized stove for the café above), remarked that very few people other than club members ever set foot in the building.

Yarmouth people may have forgotten it exists.  If and when the bingo moves on, the Regent will need a new purpose.

It’s too good to lose.

Update:  Mecca closed their operation at the Regent “at the end of 2011”.  It reopens as Stars Showbar and Nightclub in April 2014:  http://starsgy.co.uk.

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

Fishy business

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Former Royal Aquarium, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

Former Royal Aquarium, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

The Hollywood Cinema on Great Yarmouth’s seafront commemorates a time when local businessmen hoped to make money out of people watching fish.

Yarmouth entrepreneurs hoped to build on the success of the Brighton Aquarium of 1872 by offering “aquaria exhibitions, combined with attractions of a more special and amusing nature” which meant restaurants, billiard rooms, croquet lawns and a skating rink in what a modern journalist described as “a grotesque mock Gothic cathedral of leisure”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, less than half the required £50,000 capital was forthcoming, and the London promoters of the Great Yarmouth & Eastern Counties Aquarium Company pulled out, leaving local shareholders to lower their sights and open a more modest facility which failed to attract visitors.

A contemporary commented that “wretched management was not an unimportant factor”:  the magistrates’ refusal of a drama licence was unhelpful;  apart from watching the fish which – to be fair – included sharks, giant crabs, conger eels, turtles, porpoises and octopi, with crocodiles, alligators and seals in large ponds, the entertainments on offer were the skating rink, military bands, refreshments and a reading room.  The Prince of Wales visited in 1881.  The place closed down in 1882.

The building reopened as the Royal Aquarium, extended at the cost of a further £10,000, in 1883.  The major asset of the reopened building was its new manager, an Edgware Road caterer, John William Nightingale.  He engaged such crowd-pulling celebrities as Sir Ernest Shackleton, Oscar Wilde, General William Booth and David Lloyd George.

There’s clearly limited demand for gazing at fish.  The Scarborough People’s Palace & Aquarium of 1875-7 [see Scarborough’s Rotunda] ultimately became an amusement arcade.

J W Nightingale became a power in the Great Yarmouth entertainment industry:  by the time of his death in 1911, he had purchased the Royal Aquarium, bought and replaced the old wooden Britannia Pier and also owned the Theatre Royal, the Royal Assembly Rooms and the Royal and Victoria Hotels.

In 1925 the Aquarium tanks were stripped out and a second “Little Theatre” auditorium added.

In a further refurbishment in 1970, the remaining evidence of the original Aquarium decoration briefly came to light.  In what had been the Grand Saloon, 193 feet by 60 feet, Doulton tiling depicting freshwater birds on one side and sea-birds on the other was found in situ, and a bread-oven was discovered in the basement, extending thirty feet under Euston Road.

When I ran the Norfolk’s Seaside Heritage tour in September 2011 I asked the manager, Paul Allen, if there was any possibility of seeing these remains.

Understandably he was disinclined to rip up the floorboards on a Saturday morning.

One day in the future, when this long-lived building is adapted to yet another use, vestigial remains of its original purpose will once again see daylight.

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.

Where Gladstone became dizzy

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Great Orme, Llandudno

Great Orme, Llandudno

The connection between Llandudno and Alice in Wonderland is never knowingly undersold – http://www.wonderland.co.uk/llandudno and http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/tauspace/llandudno.htm and http://www.attractionsnorthwales.co.uk/news/324/llandudno-s-connections-with-alice-in-wonderland – even though it’s entirely spurious.

Dean Henry Liddell, father of the real Alice, purchased an unpromising plot on the West Shore from the Mostyn Estate and built an elaborate Gothic villa which he called Penmorfa, “the end of the shore”.

The house was completed in 1862:  Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland by a boat-trip on the River Isis near Oxford on July 4th 1862, and completed his manuscript in February 1863;  there is no record of him visiting Llandudno during that period.

This didn’t prevent the construction of the white-marble statue of Alice, unveiled by David Lloyd George in 1933.  Strenuous attempts to protect this twee souvenir from vandalism eventually led to its removal to the middle of a lake:  http://www.northwalesweeklynews.co.uk/conwy-county-news/local-conwy-news/2011/06/30/llandudno-s-alice-in-wonderland-statue-to-moved-to-a-safer-location-55243-28963871.

There’s a much better story about Alice Liddell than anything to do with Lewis Carroll.

When the Liddells first came to Llandudno the only route around the Great Orme was a precipitous walkway called Cust’s Path, built in 1856-8.  This was so vertiginous that when he came to stay at Penmorfa W E Gladstone had to be blindfolded and led to safety by Dean Liddell and his family, including Alice.

Cust’s Path was adapted for road vehicles between 1872 and 1878 as the four-mile Marine Drive.  Building it wiped out the last remaining cave-dwelling on the Great Orme, occupied by Isaiah and Miriam Jones.  Isaiah was famous for having attempted to fly using seagull’s wings attached to his arms:  his wife nursed him to a full recovery and he lived into his eighties.

She lived to the age of 91, dying in 1910, and protested that having brought up thirteen children in a cave she disliked the more modern accommodation she was given in compensation for her eviction.  From her Welsh name, Miriam yr Ogof, “Miriam of the Cave”, her many descendants are still nicknamed ’R’ogo.

You can ride round the Marine Drive in a vintage coach [http://www.alpine-travel.co.uk/vintagecoaches.htm], drive round it on payment of a toll, or walk.  Half way round is the Rest-and-be-thankful Café:  http://www.restandbethankful.net.

You can even stay at the Lighthouse, built by the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board in 1862 and now a sumptuous bed-and-breakfast guest-house:  http://www.lighthouse-llandudno.co.uk.

Near the western end are the fragmentary remains of what was called Gogarth Abbey but is in fact the thirteenth-century palace of the Bishop of Bangor, Anian, his reward from King Edward I for baptising his eldest son, the first English Prince of Wales and later King Edward II.

Dean Liddell’s Penmorfa, which for years was the Gogarth Abbey Hotel, was demolished, despite protests, after a botched restoration attempt, in 2008:  see http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2008/11/20/llandudno-s-alice-in-wonderland-house-to-be-demolished-55578-22298706 and http://www.greatorme.org.uk/Trail13.html.

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.

Pier excellence

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Grand Hotel & Pier, Llandudno

Grand Hotel & Pier, Llandudno

Llandudno Pier is one of the finest unspoilt British piers, and it’s always been my favourite because it’s the one I remember, as a child, still in use for its original purposes.

Seaside piers were, after all, primarily landing stages, which quickly gained an entertainment function because they offered landlubber holidaymakers the experience of being out at sea without the inconvenience of sea-sickness.

The main section of the Llandudno Pier by the engineer James Brunlees, 1,200 feet long, opened on August 1st 1877.  The Baths, Reading Room and Billiard Hall alongside were reopened as the Baths Hotel in 1879, and a spur was added linking the Pier to the promenade in 1884.  Alongside this the Pier Pavilion, a huge glass structure 204 feet long and between 84 and 104 feet wide, was opened in September 1886.  Its basement contained a swimming pool 160 feet by 48 feet, then one of the largest in existence.

The Baths Hotel was replaced in 1900 by the existing Grand Hotel, designed by James Francis Doyle.  The Pier Pavilion, having stood derelict in the ownership of a developer who famously didn’t develop, was destroyed by fire on February 13th 1994:  [See http://llandudnoandcolwynbay.blogspot.com/2009/07/pier-pavilion-llandudno.html and http://llandudnoandcolwynbay.blogspot.com/2009/08/exploration.html].

When we stayed in Llandudno in the 1950s one of the highlights was a paddle-steamer trip from Llandudno Pier to Menai Bridge and back on one or other of the Liverpool & North Wales Steamship Company steamships, St Tudno or St Seiriol [http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/LNWSS3.html].

The trip, which we did on more than one occasion, included chugging round the enigmatically inaccessible Puffin Island, with its mysterious hill top tower, and gazing from Telford’s suspension bridge at the beached wreck of HMS Conway.

Puffin Island [Ynys Seiriol] was part of the Bulkeley family’s Baron Hill estate, of which the derelict Palladian house by Samuel Wyatt is illustrated at http://www.welshruins.co.uk/photo2076816.html and http://www.urbexforums.co.uk/showthread.php/10992-Baron-Hill-Mansion-Beaumaris-Jan-2011.

The tower forms part of the remains of one of the stations on the semaphore telegraph system that brought news of incoming ships from Holyhead to Liverpool [see Frank Large’s detailed study, Faster Than the Wind: A History of and a Guide to the Liverpool to Holyhead Telegraph (Avid 1998)].  More details of the island, and the opportunity to take a close look at it, are at http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/locations/Routes/Islands/LG/Anglesey/Puffin_Island.htm.

What we knew as HMS Conway was originally HMS Nile, launched in 1839 and used as a Liverpool-based training vessel until, while being towed through the Menai Strait in 1953, she grounded and broke her back.  She was eventually destroyed by fire three years later.  A detailed account is at http://www.hmsconway.org/RootFolder/Assets/Home_Page.htm.

The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company maintained a tenuous steamer service to and from Llandudno Pier, and the celebrated PS Waverley and MV Balmoral made occasional visits until the landing stage was declared unsafe in 2007.

Nevertheless, the Pier itself appears to be in good order, and it’s an essential part of the Llandudno experience to stroll to the end of the pier, watch the fishermen and have either a cup of tea or an alcoholic drink in the bar, very much as the Victorian patrons would have done 130 years ago.

Descriptions of Llandudno Pier are at http://www.piers.org.uk/pierpages/NPSllandudno.html and http://the-pier.co.uk/llandudno-pier.

Blog-articles about other piers are at Lost resort in Yorkshire, Stars on the street, End of the pier show, Exploring Australia 10:  St Kilda and Wasting asset.

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.

 

Between two Ormes

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Glan y Mor Parade, Llandudno,

Glan y Mor Parade, Llandudno,

Llandudno is a beautifully unspoilt Victorian holiday resort because the freeholds are still largely owned by the Mostyn Estate, which dictated the layout, the width of the streets and the height of the buildings, and has never allowed razzmatazz on the seafront (or anywhere else, for that matter):  http://www.mostyn-estates.co.uk/history.htm.

In the 1830s, before anyone even thought of building a holiday resort, it could have been a replacement for Holyhead.

At the beginning of the age of steam railways, there was a problem in speeding up the Irish mails that went by horse-drawn stage-coach along Thomas Telford’s road across Anglesey because the Admiralty insisted on a high-level bridge over the Menai Strait. 

George Stephenson seriously suggested drawing railway carriages by cable across Telford’s suspension road-bridge of 1826, which couldn’t cope with the weight of even the earliest locomotives.

The St George’s Harbour & Railway Company proposed a rail-served new port, to be called St George, beside the Great Orme.  This would bring the journey-time from London to Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) in good weather to 19½ hours, and avoid the need for a high-level railway bridge to cross the Menai Straits.

A rival scheme to avoid Anglesey was proposed between London, Worcester, Bala, Ffestiniog, Tremadog and Pwllheli to a port at Porthdinllaen, the only safe haven on the north-west coast of the Lleyn peninsula.  The Porthdinllaen Harbour Company, originally established in 1804-8, apparently still exists:  its premises on what would have been the harbour-front now belong to the National Trust:  http://www.walesdirectory.co.uk/Towns_in_Wales/Porth_Dinllaen_Town.htm.

Neither scheme gained much favour:  the Railway Magazine of October 1838 argued that if Irish ferries had to pass Holyhead they might as well also pass Ormes Bay and sail directly into Liverpool.

Both schemes were rejected by a Treasury Commission in 1839-40, which accepted the Admiralty’s uncompromising view that Ormes Bay and Porthdinllaen were alike “mere roadsteads”.

So instead, the Mostyn estate developed the flat land between the Great and Little Orme promontories from 1849 onwards as a holiday resort which became known, after the church of St Tudno on the headland, as Llandudno.

It’s perhaps as well:  the idea of carrying the Irish mails through Wales via a harbour named after the English patron saint was, at the very least, tactless.

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.