Moving on along the coast road towards Southport, we find Ainsdale beach which is a haven of things to do for the day. Awarded International Blue Flag on a number of occasions it is now recognised as one of the premier beaches in the UK for para cart and extreme kite activities, with zones set aside for kite buggy landboard use and kitesurfing taking place on the sea. Arriving in Southport we can see the large fairground established in 1912 and Splash World, an indoor water park situated on the back of the Dunes swimming pool which opened in June 2007. It is still one of the most popular seaside resorts in the UK and hosts various events during the year, including an annual air show on and over the beach, usually with the Red Arrows participating, the largest independent flower show in the UK at Victoria Park and the British Musical Fireworks Championship. Town attractions include a Model Railway Village and Southport Pier, built in 1860, the second longest seaside pleasure pier in the British Isles. In the Victorian era, it was the stage for numerous performers, including the legendary Charlie Chaplin, and from 1903 there were an array of divers, typically diving from the tea house roof several times daily; the most popular and longest-serving were Professors Osbourne and Powsey, the latter frequently jumping off the pier on a bicycle. At 1108 metres in length, it straddles the Marine Lake where a choice of water based activities can keep the whole family entertained having pedalos and motor boats for hire as well as offering high speed rides on a power boat. The elegant tree-lined shopping thoroughfare Lord Street, with its many water features, gardens and architectural buildings along the entire street, was the inspiration behind the tree-lined boulevards of Paris. When Prince Louis Napoleon of France had an extended break in Southport in 1838, he was so taken aback by the town's, long, straight, roads, with their ornate additions, that when returning to France as emperor, he set about replicating the design across the city. The town is also at the centre of England's Golf Coast and has hosted the Open Championship at the Royal Birkdale Golf Club. In 2011, Southport was named the fourteenth-most popular coastal resort in the country. It also boasts the British Lawnmower Museum, which opened in 1987.
The first real evidence of an early settlement here is in the Domesday Book in which the area is called Otergimele consisting of 50 huts housing a population of 200. It was here, it seems, that a primitive church was built, which gave the emerging village its name of Churchtown. In the late 18th century, it was becoming fashionable for the well-to-do to relinquish inland spa towns and visit the seaside to bathe in the salt sea waters as doctors recommended such bathing would help cure aches and pains. In 1792, William Sutton, the landlord of the Black Bull Inn in Churchtown (now the Hesketh Arms) and known to locals as 'The Old Duke', realised the importance of the newly created canal systems across the UK and set up a bathing house in the virtually uninhabited dunes at South Hawes by the seaside just four miles (6 km) away from the newly constructed Leeds and Liverpool Canal and only two miles southwest of Churchtown.The canal brought people from Liverpool, Manchester, Bolton and Wigan amongst others. When a widow from Wigan built a cottage nearby in 1797 for seasonal lodgers, Sutton quickly built a new inn on the site of the bathing house in 1798 which he called the South Port Hotel, moving to live there the following season. Although locals thought him mad and referred to the building as the 'Duke's Folly', Sutton arranged transport links from the canal that ran through Scarisbrick four miles from the hotel, and trade was remarkably good and by 1820 Southport had over 20,000 visitors per year. The hotel survived until 1854, when it was demolished to make way for traffic at the end of Lord Street, but its presence and the impact of its founder are marked by a plaque in the vicinity, by the name of one street at the intersection, namely Duke Street, and by a hotel on Duke Street which bears the legacy name of Dukes Folly Hotel. In 1845, the town centre site now occupied by civic buildings, such as the library, arts centre and town hall, there were two banks of terraced houses known as Richmond Hill and Rose Hill Cottages. The Rose Hill buildings were eventually demolished to make way for Cambridge Hall in 1872, now effectively the Arts Centre, and in 1881 saw the building of the Atkinson Art Gallery on the spot of Richmond Hill. The historic Turkish baths which now stand opposite the Ramada Plaza Hotel was actually preceded by an even earlier version which overlooked the sea in 1839 until around 1860.
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The Royal Birkdale Hotel
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Such was the popularity of the resort that it had several large hotels that attracted a number of celebrities over the years. Set amid the open spaces and sand dunes and representing something of a monument to the stunning architecture of the Victorian era, the stunning Birkdale Palace Hotel had hosted Hollywood legends including Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers and Boris Karloff, as well as the Hungary team during the 1966 World Cup. The hotel, with its 1,000 rooms and about 200 bedrooms and suites, was once Southport's biggest, and was once so important that it boasted its own railway station with the line running along a route through the sand dunes since replaced by the Coastal Road. The hotel had a huge ballroom, three bars, restaurant, tennis courts and pavilions. Its extensive garages housed guests' Rolls-Royces, Daimlers and Bentleys. Frank Sinatra stayed there while he was performing for five nights at the Liverpool Empire in 1953. However most of the building was demolished in the 1960s to make way for new homes, although one corner remains - the hotel's former coach house, which is now The Fishermens Rest pub on Weld Road. Dark stories about the Palace, once rumoured to be Britain's most haunted building, have been passed down as folklore. These include the suicide of the architect, two sisters dying in a suicide pact at the hotel, the murder of a child by a night porter and lifts which moved of their own accord, despite all power being cut during demolition confirmed by Electricity board officials. The head of the demolition team Mr Smith said, "It's all the more frightening as the hotel is reputed to have been built back to front and the architect who designed it committed suicide by jumping from the top landing. He landed, so it is said, on the very spot where the lift now stands."
The likes of Marlene Dietrich, Bing Crosby, Dame Shirley Bassey and professional golfer Jack Nicklaus also resided at the famous Royal Clifton Hotel on the sea front. On Lord Street, The Prince of Wales Hotel guests include HRH Princess Margaret, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Eartha Kitt, Andy Williams, Bette Davis, Shirley Maclaine, Prime Minister James Callaghan, Sir David Steele, Elkie Brookes, Hot Chocolate and Sir Cliff Richard. In addition the worlds top golfers over the years have stayed at the hotel during the British Open Golf championship held at Royal Birkdale, including Tiger Woods, Nick Faldo, Jack Nicolas, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Seve Balasteros and Tom Watson. The hotel say that the first ever performance, outside Liverpool, of 'The Beatles', was held in the hotel's Bamber Ballroom.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/06/lets-have-day-out-to-llandudno.html
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