Calls for Blackpool's 'under-appreciated' colonnades to get listed status

An ‘under-appreciated’ part of Blackpool’s seafront could be one of the next places in the resort to get listed status.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

Blackpool Civic Trust has put in a number of applications to get the resort’s lower and middle colonnades, which are nearly a century old, national listed status.

The colonnades are situated on the North Promenade, with five on the middle walk and one on the lower walk and are already locally listed.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Joan Humble, chairman of Blackpool Civic Trust, said applications were put in a few months ago to get the group of larger Promenade shelters in Bispham and Norbreck locally and nationally listed with Historic England.

But she said the ‘the most exciting plan’ is the application to have the Lower and Middle Walk Colonnades nationally listed.

Joan, who is the former MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, said: “How many Colonnades and inter-linking covered walk-ways do you know in England that allow visitors to walk approximately half a mile under cover from beginning to end? How many people fully appreciate the magnitude of Blackpool Corporation’s magnificent achievements in the 1920s?

“No sooner had the momental open-air baths in South Shore be built and opened then the Corporation started work on the ambitious Colonnades scheme, which included an impressive entry at Gynn Square of which little survives intact.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Joan also said it took just two years to build the five middle walk colonnades and they were completed a year before Stanley Park was opened in 1926.

The colonnades feature heavily in Blackpool Council’s North Promenade Conservation Area Appraisal in 2018 which outlined how they needed to be refurbished due to signs of deterioration.

Joan said: “The Council began the daunting task of painting all the Colonnades last summer but a prolonged spell of weather weather put a temporary stop to this.

“I am very glad that they have put this work in hand because I think the Colonnades are not properly appreciated and are overlooked when we talk about Blackpool’s seaside heritage. I want to change this state of affairs.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We have also applied to have the larger Promenade Shelters situated in Bispham and Norbreck locally and nationally listed. At present only the smaller Promenade shelters, with their distinctive plinths and ‘bullet-eyes’, are nationally listed.”

Historic England is the public body which oversees buildings getting a listed status. Listing a building marks and celebrates its special architectural and historic interest.

Related topics: