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When did Blackpool start to decline?

Carter Mayer
Carter Mayer
2025-04-18 09:43:30
Count answers: 0
Blackpool was Britain’s glittering Vegas-on-Sea — and then cheap flights lured us away. Blackpool’s last peak was August bank holiday in 1981, when visitors rented all 28,000 deckchairs in town. Thereafter, the resort led the decline of the British seaside, reaching the bottom of the trough in 2014, when the council offloaded the last 6,000 deck chairs, admitting that no-one had rented one since 2011. In 1911, the town’s Central Station was the busiest in the world, and in July 1936, 650 trains came and went in a single day. The sad fact remains that the biggest Blackpool headline for many of us has been its decline. Blackpool has been as much about levelling up as living it up. The sophistication for which Blackpool was once famous — the Grundy Art Gallery, the Matcham-designed Grand Theatre, and two magnificent ballrooms — has long been overshadowed by a culture of low-brow excess.