Some old Photographs of Bispham Cliffs

We’ve been colouring in some old photographs again, this time, as the title suggests, of Bispham cliffs, in order to highlight the ridiculous dangers that early travellers to the Fylde were willing to face in their ignorance.
Colouring in old postcards, incidentally, is excellent therapy and we recommend it to most people reading this board.
Here’s the first one, entitled ‘On the Cliffs, Blackpool’. (Presumably the words ‘Potential’ and ‘Death’ have been accidentally omitted from the start of that description.) Our colour scheme might have gone off a tangent from reality, but we estimate the photograph to be of the Edwardian period.


They’re all sitting right on the edge of the cliffs are that lot. No…look at them! They’re right on the edge, with their toes hanging over. That’s the sort of stuff that’d give your average Health and Safety Executive a stroke, that is. (Well…if he could get close enough to some of those ladies in their tight bodices and laced-up ankle boots he’d have stroke, anyhow.)
It’s a wonder, given the precarious nature of the cliffs and the fact that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a habit of falling off them every few years, that the whole lot didn’t give way.
There is a good reason for such a large crowd, in case you’re wondering. In Victorian and Edwardian times Lancashire factories would close for a week during the summer, to give their workers a well-earned break. As a result entire communities took their holidays at the same time. These events were known as Wakes Weeks, an evolution of the mediaeval Wakes Holy Days (from which the word ‘holiday’ derives). We’ve written about them before on this board in considerably more detail, so if you’re that way inclined, you can go and look them up. (And that’s about as much proper history as you’re going to get in this particular article.)
Here’s another photograph of Bispham cliffs that’d have the Health and Safety People waking up in a cold sweat (whether out of fear or pleasure I wouldn’t hazard to guess).


Bah gum, look at the steepness of that…not to mention the lopsided angle of it. A vertiginous set of steps if ever there was one, leading down the cliff face near Bispham tram station; particularly difficult to navigate, we suspect, when wearing high heels and dresses resembling meringues like the two picnickers on the beach at the bottom.
Beats most of the white knuckle rides at the pleasure beach, does that one. Those two kids about a sixth of the way up look as though they’re paralysed with fear. It puts one in mind of the old nursery rhyme:

‘Jack and Jill went down the cliff, to fetch a pail of seashells.
Jack fell down and bust his neck and then lay perfectly still in a small crumpled heap with his head staved in on the rocks.’

There have been a few improvements from a safety perspective since the lower promenade was added. For a start fewer walruses like the one in the photograph plunge to their deaths from the cliffs now. It’s also considerably easier for wheelchair access nowadays, I would imagine.
One last somewhat disturbing image from about the same period then:


“Go on, Son. Jump oop un’ doon on’t. Let’s see what ’appens!”
This particular postcard is entitled ‘The Steps, Bispham’ although ‘Death on Stilts’ would make a reasonable alternative title.
As you can see, it’s difficult to imagine this complicated construction of rickety planks standing up to a typical Fylde coast gale, which is probably why it isn’t there any longer. Nowadays, of course, the slades are all fashioned from concrete and shored up with rocks, transforming them into ideal racetracks for cyclists and exciting bob sleigh runs in the winter, where pedestrians and dog walkers can be targeted as human skittles.