The Give 'Em Beans! Guide to... MORECAMBE
I used to like Morecambe. I'm not sure why, but I was very young at the time. It represented all the fun things in life that young kids most look forward to; roller coasters, dodgems, ghost trains and lettered rock. And all this was just round the Bay from Barrow, although it was almost a ninety minute journey in those days. Looking at it now, it's hard to believe that not so very long ago Morecambe rivalled Blackpool. It had the first illuminations and was the birthplace of bingo and the helter-skelter. Up to 100,000 visitors at a time flocked to its boarding houses and hotels. At its peak it had two railway stations, eight music halls, eight cinemas, an aquarium, a funfair, a menagerie, a revolving tower, a boating garden, a Summer Pavilion, a Winter Gardens, the largest swimming pool in the country and two piers. One of these, Central Pier, was so beautiful and elaborate with fabulous towers and domed roofs it was like an Arabian palace afloat in Morecambe Bay. Its hotels, like the Grand and the Broadway, were the equal of any in Europe. The Old Vic and Sadler's Wells spent whole seasons there. Elgar conducted orchestras in the Winter Gardens. It was hard to reconcile this history with the Morecambe of today as I walked along faded Marine Drive, the main road along the sea front, with about an hour to kill before kick-off. It was a sunny, warm evening if you could stay out of the cold wind (and this was the middle of August) and I wondered when it was that Morecambe's decline started. It was still popular when I went there as a young kid in the '60's. But the Central Pier had been damaged by fire in the 1930's and allowed to degenerate into an embarrassing wreck. The West End Pier was swept away in a storm in 1974, the Alhambra Music Hall burned down in 1970 and the Royalty Theatre was demolished to make way for a shopping centre two years later. By the '70's the decline of the place was well and truly established. All the local landmarks vanished, from the swimming pool to the Winter Gardens and the Grand Hotel. The working classes of the North abandoned holidays in Morecambe for cheap packages to Tossa del Mar and Ibiza, where the sun was hot and it never rained. Today the seafront is nothing but tatty. Little used bingo halls and noisy amusement arcades are separated by cheap boutiques where the clothes are so unfashionable that they can be put on racks outside and left unattended. But turn away from Morecambe and look across the Bay. The view must be one of the most beautiful in the world, even though we tend to take it for granted. Across the gently lapping waters of the Irish Sea and behind Barrow and the Furness peninsula rises the imposing bulk of the Lake District mountains, from Black Combe on the left, past Scafell and the Langdale Pikes to the huge, black mass of Coniston Old Man. The only reminder of Morecambe's glory days is the Midland Hotel with its rather awful streamlined frontage. No doubt it looked very futuristic when it was opened in 1933. Apparently, it should have been built from concrete. But local builders didn't know how to work with this relatively new material. So they used red bricks and rendered the whole place in white plaster so it looked like concrete. Today it's crumbling around the edges and streaked with rust stains. I suppose the really surprising thing about Morecambe is not that it declined, but that it was ever a success. As we Barrovians know only too well, the beaches around Morecambe Bay are less like sand and more like dark brown, gooey mud. The tide goes out an awful long way and to reach the sea at low tide you need a backpack, light lunch, compass and walking boots. Oh, and about four hours. And it stays out for a long, long time. When it comes in, it's lethal. If you're out in the Bay, before you know what's happened the sea has crept silently up behind you and cut off your line of retreat back to the shore. You're left stranded on a large, but ever-shrinking, sand bank in the middle of the sea. Many have drowned in this way. Parts of Morecambe do look quite fetching. The line of guest houses at the end of Marine Drive are well maintained. Moving inland towards the football ground, the terraced houses soon give way to long, tree-lined streets of semi-detached houses, all with neat gardens, trimmed lawns and grass verges. It seems so genteel and safe. If they could find some way to attract the holidaymaker, it wouldn't be such a bad place to spend a couple of days after all. But they'll have to do a bit better than the town's website, which encourages us to 'visit Christie Park, where you'll see some of the most exciting football you've ever seen played.' Sadly, they don't carry a definition of their phrase exciting football. Unlike the rest of Morecambe, the football ground looks better than it ever did. There's two large, imposing grandstands, one of which is relatively new, having been erected behind the Lancaster Road end goal where there used to be a grassy mound. Opposite the main grandstand a new terrace has been installed and behind the other goal the old terracing has been replaced under a large canopy. It looks better than Holker St. In fact, it looks like Holker St would have looked if Barrow hadn't lost their place in the Football League in 1972. Strange how, as the town has declined, the football team has prospered. Morecambe FC have spent four seasons in the Conference and are now firmly established as one of the teams in the top ten. The town was relegated from the top rank of seaside resorts some time ago. Issue 036 - September 1998