Press Cutting – Mecca of the most intrepid (1926)

LANCASHIRE EVENING POST

FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1926

No review of the history of more modern Blackpool would be complete without a reference to the amusement centres in the town, their origin and their progress, for there is certainly a glamour surrounding their rise to fame.

The great pleasure resort is said even now to rely for its major attractiveness, writes our Blackpool representative, on the breeze from the Irish Sea, and though this may be true in part, what pleasant vivid memories of halcyon summer evenings are aroused in the minds of the young people of the industrial north - and older ones, too - by the mention of the Tower, Winder Gardens, or the great Pleasure Beach, once a dark expanse of sandhills and now radiant with glittering lights!

The Pleasure Beach is a place which may now be regarded as a town's institution and not merely a profit-making machine. The Beach had its origin so recently as 1894, a year after the promenade had been extended to the Victoria Pier.

At first there were a few side shows, with, of course the ubiquitous phrenologist, and itinerant photographer, but to these were eventually added "Old Dan's" hobby-horses, and a skittle alley.

Then there arrived a model switchback and a bicycle railway, and little by little the concern grew from the dimensions of a small travelling fair to a great centre complete with the most modern "thrillers" and the mecca of the most intrepid and adventurous people.