Step back in time into the St Annes of the past

Readers will recognise some sights in the pictures, but others are long since gone.

The bungalow shown on the skyline later became the site of houses in Cartmell Road and the inner Promenade. We are viewing it here from what is now Lancaster Avenue. The bungalow, called The Dunes, had quite a history attached to it. When built, in the 1890s for local solicitor and historian Mr H T Crofton, it was one of the most modern designs of its time.

With its commanding views of the St Annes coastline, it was snapped up by the great Victorian benefactor Lord Ashton, a linoleum manufacturer from Lancaster.

As the Second World War loomed imminently, men were employed to dig trenches across the Fylde coast. Our archive picture from October 1938 shows a trench being dug in St Annes.

And a bulldozer moves sand for a different reason in December 1955 on Clifton Drive North – it was shifting the blown-in sand from the beach.

The start of the St Annes Children’s sand yacht race, organised by the Fylde International Sand Yacht Club at St Annes, is pictured in September 1955.

The old Ormerod Home in St Annes can be seen marooned during the famous floods of 1927 which hit the Fylde coast. Ex-servicemen are pictured awaiting the arrival of Earl Jellicoe, admiral of the Fleet, on October 2, 1929 – he opened the new St Annes Ex-Service Clubhouse in Alexandra Road, St Annes.

And construction work on Fylde Borough Council’s £2m seafront indoor swimming pool in St Annes is shown, in August 1985.