Blackpool holiday camp name is a puzzle but business boomed when it became Pontin’s

By Barry Band
Squire's Gate Holiday Beach postcardSquire's Gate Holiday Beach postcard
Squire's Gate Holiday Beach postcard

Signs of the times are bread and butter to Memory Lane and we’ve just discovered a little slice of history.Unnoticed in the Gazette archives was a postcard, a composite of five photos, one of which has a painted sign: Squires Gate Holiday Beach.

There is enough detail in the photos to suggest this was the old Squires Gate Holiday Camp as we remember it.

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But the sign is a puzzle. Was it put there by the new Squires Gate Holiday Camp Ltd in 1938? If so, why use a different name? Could it date from the previous use of the site?

The former Pontin's holiday campThe former Pontin's holiday camp
The former Pontin's holiday camp

Did it only exist before WW2? Can anyone remember seeing it after the war?

The Holiday Beach name wasn’t used in Press reports and I’m told that Squires Gate residents didn’t use it in conversation.

The site of the holiday camp, which was Pontin’s from 1962, is now the Coastal Dunes residential development.

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We thought the newcomers would like to know the history of this site, bordered by the railway line and Clifton Drive North.

A browse through the archives began with my Memory Lane item from February, 2015.

The site was previously a Pontin’s Holiday Camp but the recreational use of the site went back to seasonal tented camps before World War One.

In the early 1930s a St Annes man, Mr Roger Herbert Pye, had the idea of turning the barren land into a commercial camp site.

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A Gazette clipping from April, 1933, states Mr Pye’s new camping ground had a large building with a store and a fish and chip shop. It was conveniently located next to Squires Gate railway station.

Could it be that the name Squires Gate Holiday Beach was used in that era?

In 1938 Mr Pye bought the land from the Clifton Estate and formed Squires Gate Holiday Camp Ltd, with a share capital of £200,0000.

An expanded camp, with chalets, shops, pool and ballroom, opened for the 1939 season but with the declaration of war, on September 3, it was taken over by the War Office.

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It became HMS Prithibian, a Royal Navy transfer station, and wasn’t handed back to the company until 1946.

Mr Pye, who died in 1964 aged 93, retired in 1950 and was succeeded as chairman by businessman Mr Stanley Jenkinson who owned a restaurant and a night spot in Blackpool.

In the 1950s the holiday camp became a popular lodging place with artists appearing in Blackpool summer shows.

In 1961 the holiday tycoon Sir Fred Pontin bought the camp for £365,000. He often said it was his biggest bargain.

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It was advertised as Pontin’s Blackpool (the fact it was in St Annes was a trivial detail!) and business boomed.

Fred expanded his holiday model into Mediterranean resorts under the Pontinental banner but the Pontin flag continued to fly over the Squires Gate camp until it closed in 2009.

Knighted in 1976, he retired from the holiday camp business in 1979 but lived in the Squires Gate area until his death in 2000, aged 93.

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