Author: Ed

Blackpool Cricket Club Festival

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The Blackpool Cricket Club Festival has quickly grown into one of the Fylde Coast’s most anticipated summer events, bringing together live music, food, and community spirit in a vibrant, family-friendly setting. While the cricket club has a long tradition of hosting social gatherings and charity events, the first official Blackpool Cricket Club Festival focusing primarily on live music appears to have taken place in 2023. What began as a local celebration of music and togetherness has since evolved into a major annual fixture, drawing visitors from across Lancashire and beyond. Held on the expansive grounds of Blackpool Cricket Club, the…

Author Nick Oldham Releases First Novel ‘Nightmare City’

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Nick Oldham was born in Belthorn, Lancashire, in 1956. He’s been a police officer since the age of nineteen, spending the majority of his service in operational roles before retiring in 2005 after 30 years of service. He lives with his partner, Belinda, on the outskirts of Preston but has used his experiences in and around Blackpool as the basis for his popular crime novels featuring Detective Inspector Henry Christie. He appeared at Palatine Library in Blackpool for an event promoting his books on 1 September 2025. His career as an author began in 1996 with A Time for Justice,…

Manchester’s Wood Street Mission Comes to Blackpool

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Wood Street Mission was founded in 1869 by Methodist minister Alfred Alsop to relieve poverty among children and families in Manchester and Salford. For generations it provided food, clothing, shelter and toys, becoming a trusted institution in the industrial North. In the 1920s, its work took a new turn with the creation of a holiday home at Squires Gate in Blackpool. Opened in 1922, the site gave over 1,000 children each summer the chance of a week by the sea. With seven acres of playing fields and a swimming pool, it offered freedoms unavailable in the city. Many annual reports…

Filming Ken Russell’s Valentino at the Blackpool Tower Circus

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Valentino was a 1977 American biographical drama directed by Ken Russell, co-written with Mardik Martin, and starring Rudolf Nureyev, Leslie Caron, Michelle Phillips, and Carol Kane. Loosely inspired by the life of silent film star Rudolph Valentino, it drew on the book Valentino, an Intimate Exposé of the Sheik by Chaw Mank and Brad Steiger. Among its highlights was a sequence filmed at the Blackpool Tower Circus. The project began in 1975 when producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff set it in motion, eventually turning to Russell to direct. The narrative was told through flashbacks following Valentino’s death in 1926,…

Hindle Wakes – Dramatic Film Shot in Blackpool and Llandudno

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Hindle Wakes was a 1952 British drama directed by Arthur Crabtree, featuring Lisa Daniely, Brian Worth, Leslie Dwyer, and Sandra Dorne. It marked the fourth screen adaptation of Stanley Houghton’s 1912 play, a story that explored a young woman’s defiance of her parents and society when she pursued a holiday romance. The independent Monarch Film Corporation produced and distributed the picture. It was filmed at Merton Park Studios in London with sets by art director Andrew Mazzei, while location work took place in Blackpool and Llandudno. The story followed Lancashire mill girls Jenny Hawthorne and Mary Hollins as they travelled…

Norbreck Bowling and Tennis Club Opens

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Norbreck Bowling and Tennis Club (as it is known today) plays an important role in the lives of many local people. Its foundations in the community were laid in October 1931, when the land owner Mr Walter Spencer set out to build a community centre for the local neighbourhood. Today the club boasts superb facilities including a beautifully maintained green, two refurbished all weather tennis courts, snooker room with two full size tables, Pool, Darts & a newly installed Petanque Court. There’s also a large bar and function room. The Club in those days, was on what is now the…

Davia Walmsley Founds Daedalian Glass Studios in Blackpool

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In her early years at Hornsey College of Art, Davia Walmsley focused on ceramics. She even paused her studies for a year to work at Alvingham Pottery, determined to master the craft of throwing clay. Yet it was glass that soon captured her imagination. By her final year at Hornsey she had turned almost entirely to glass, a material that would define the rest of her career. After Middlesex University she continued her studies at Brierley Hill, gaining a postgraduate certificate in glass technology. From there she entered the glass industry to gain practical experience. Several studios sought her skills,…

Elephants Marched up and Down Blackpool’s Promenade

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Before 1990, the Blackpool Tower Circus featured elephants as a prominent part of its shows and was famous for exercising the animals with morning walks along the beach and promenade. For decades, it was a regular sight for visitors and locals to see the elephants going down to the water to bathe. The first elephants were used in the Tower Circus in 1895, a year after the circus had opened. The animals were trained by a man named Julius Wagner and were a popular attraction. The circus continued to feature wild animal acts, including elephants, until 1990, when the use…

ICI Hillhouse Starts Manufacturing Chemicals in Thornton Cleveleys

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ICI Hillhouse was a chlorine-production facility in Lancashire, England. A division of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), it was active between 1941 and 1992. Its triangular footprint spread from the banks of the River Wyre at Stanah in the east, to Hillylaid Road in the southwest, to the southern edge of Fleetwood in the north. Its entrances were on Hillylaid Road (via the extant gate at the end of today’s The Hawthorns) and on Butts Road in Burn Naze. Burn Naze Halt railway station served those arriving by train. ICI Hillhouse expanded on a United Alkali Company venture begun in 1890….

Tragic End for Olympian Alfred Tysoe in Blackpool

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The Olympic Games of 1900 in Paris were far removed from the modern spectacle. Poorly organised and overshadowed by the World’s Fair, they still provided the stage for a Lancashire runner to make history. Alfred Ernest Tysoe, born in Padiham on 4 April 1874, rose above the chaos to claim gold in the 800 metres. On an uneven grass track at the Bois de Boulogne, he left American rivals trailing and crossed the line in 2:01.2. He then added a second title in the 5000 metre team race alongside his British teammates.