Blackpool and its District

Blackpool Away From The Promenade

The area known as Marton is almost large enough to be a town in its own right. Once there was both Great and Little Marton, each having its own windmill. Great Marton Mill, near the present Oxford Corner, has long since disappeared but Little Marton still has its windmill.

It stands on a green near the M55 motorway and is a regular restoration project as, due to it's exposed position, the winds get a little too strong for the sails every now and then! It is one of the few windmills in the Fylde (as the area around Blackpool is known) to be floodlit at night and is dedicated to the memory of Allen Clarke, who wrote a book "Windmill Land" back when 11 mills could be seen from the top of the Tower.

There used to be a saying that Marton Moss, like God's mercy, knew no boundary. Today this area to the south of the town is where the Blackpool tomatoes and lettuce, bought all over the North West of England, are grown in acre upon acre of glasshouses under carefully controlled conditions and in fields, gardens and allotments. It seems that every house has at least one glasshouse at the rear.

Some of the country lanes "on the moss" are an absolute delight. Grassy verges, hedgerows, trees and all the houses and cottages set well back from the roadway.

The houses have names instead of mere numbers and one is as likely to meet a rider on horseback as a motor car. And they do have to be called "motor cars" here, not just "cars". It is easy to take yourself back to a different age walking down some of these little lanes.

The architecture of Blackpool is extremely varied. It is as though the town has expanded in fits and starts, for the style of architecture can change almost with every second house. Building can be a costly business here as even a mile or two from the Premenade sand can be found by digging down only a short way. This means that deep piles have to be sunk to hold up foundations.

Here and there one comes across a small cottage with low doors, nestling incongruously between two seemingly huge houses. The cottages of old Blackpool can still be found. With walls of pebble and timber, sometimes bare, but more often than not stuccoed with whitewashed plaster. They date back over 200 years. Many are listed buildings, protected by law.

One such stands at the top of Squires Gate Lane, in what used to be a rather precarious position before road works mad it easier for large vehicles to manouvre round the corner. Whereas the developers could not demolish it to build the new through road to the M55, a lorry turning into the then T-junction almost did the job by accident. Happily, after repair work, the little cottage survived as it has done for many generations.

A few of Blackpool's old inns still survive also, although inside they have been altered out of all recognition were their original customers able to return to look.

The early inns of Blackpool were numbered. No. 3 and No. 4 still exist: the No. 3 on the junction of Whitegate Drive with Newton Drive and the No. 4 a little way up Newton Drive. No. 1 was lost many years ago, but No. 2 still stands although now re-named "The Saddle". It can be found further down Whitegate Drive towards Oxford Corner.

In the early years of the 20th Century the Circular Tour tramcars used to bring interested trippers down Whitegate Drive to see the tree-lined road, the large houses of well-to-do residents and the hospital. The latter is now a health centre, the hospital patients being catered for at the huge Victoria Hospital near Stanley Park. Many of the large houses are still there, many of them now owned and used by local government departments.

A holiday resort might seem an odd place for what is now Britain's largest British-owned car manufacturer, but TVR Engineering in their factory on Bristol Avenue turn out 2000 of their exclusive and highly-prized sports cars every year. They are exported all over the world.

At the extreme southern end of Blackpool is an industrial estate that came to the attention of Hitler's Luftwaffe in the Second World War. With the advent of war an area at Squires Gate was taken to be used by the RAF as a Coastal Command training station.

Concrete runways were laid down in 1940 and in the same year a huge factory was built for the assembly of Wellington bombers. Despite four bombing raids by the Germans, the factory survived the war and was re-opened in 1950 to assemble Hawker Hunter jets. It has since been divided into small industrial units which now make up the Squires Gate Industrial Estate.