In the late 19th and early 20th century holidaying at the seaside became extremely popular in Britain. The expansion of the railways meant that a trip to the coast was easier and there was a host of natural and built attractions to draw in visitors. Unfortunately sunny weather couldn't always be guaranteed, so towns quickly realised that indoor attractions were needed.
Winter Gardens were the solution - entertainment complexes made out of glass, often with trees and flowering plants inside.
A souvenir of The Crystal Palace owned by the author.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
Winter Gardens owners took their inspiration from The Crystal Palace the stunning iron and glass building originally constructed for The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 at Hyde Park, London. The Crystal Palace was the idea of three men - Prince Albert, Henry Cole (also known for creating the first commercial Christmas card) and Joseph Paxton.
Paxton had been designing glass houses for twenty years when he was commissioned to create The Crystal Palace including the Lily House at Chatsworth which was built to protect the giant Victoria Regia a rare tropical water plant that had been newly discovered and its seed brought back to Britain.
The Crystal Palace was so popular it was moved south of the River Thames to Sydenham in 1854. It was sadly destroyed by a fire in 1936.
Souvenir of The Southport Pavilion Winter Gardens
& Aquarium owned by the author.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
The first Winter Garden was built in Southport, Lancashire, on land between the Promenade and Lord Street it's smart shopping street which is said to have inspired the famous Champs-Élysées in Paris.
The Winter Gardens was built by Manchester architects Maxwell and Tuke, who also designed Blackpool Tower, though they both died before it was finished.
Their Winter Gardens opened 150 years ago, in September 1874, and was advertised as 'the largest conservatory in England' and was built between two brick pavilions.
Postcard showing Southport Winter Gardens (right) owned by the author.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
There were extensive gardens outside the building and a 170 foot promenade inside where visitors could stroll and admire the indoor planting. There was also a band pavilion, a reading room, a chess room and a conservatory filled with plants and flowers as well as a cascade (waterfall.)
The aquarium had over 20 tanks for fish including sharks and pools for seals and crocodiles.
An opera house was added in 1851 designed by the renowned theatre designer Frank Matcham (he also designed the famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom).
The opera house was destroyed by a fire in 1929 and was replaced by the art deco Garrick Theatre which later became a cinema and then a bingo hall and is now set to be transformed into a fancy spa hotel.
The Garrick Theatre, Southport, was built on the site
of the Southport Winter Gardens Opera House is set to be restored.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
Winter Gardens soon followed at Bournemouth and Torquay on the South Coast.
Southport and Bournemouth Winter Gardens were demolished in the 1930s but the one at Torquay was sold to Great Yarmouth who had the building taken apart and the pieces transported by barge to its new home!
Now Grade II* listed, the Winter Gardens closed in 2008 but is due to be renovated as it was awarded a Heritage Horizon Award by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Blackpool Winter Gardens features on the cover of Gracie Fairshaw and the Missing Reel by Susan Brownrigg (illustration by Jenny Czerwonka)
My latest children's book - Gracie Fairshaw and the Missing Reel is partly set in Blackpool Winter Gardens. The story is set around the filming of a movie in the resort in 1935. The plot was inspired by actress Gracie Fields filming Sing as We Go in the town. In the book, my characters visit the posh Renaissance Restaurant in the Winter Gardens and go to a casting call in the Spanish Hall.
Coronation Street entrance with white faience tiles, to Blackpool Winter Gardens.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
The Blackpool Winter Gardens opened in 1878 and is also Grade II* listed. Early attractions included gardens and a roller skating rink.
Early features included a fernery. There is also a horseshoe promenade and the floral hall which has a beautiful glass roof.
Glass roof, Floral Hall, Blackpool Winter Gardens. (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
The building has had many changes over the years, including three versions of an opera houses (the first was also designed by Frank Matcham).
It is also home to not one, but two Wurlitzer organs!
Wurlitzer organ, Empress Ballroom. (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
In 1896 a Big Wheel was added to the outside of the building, in the hope it would be a rival attraction to Blackpool Tower. The 'jolly wheel' as it was known locally was closed in 1928 and taken apart. Apparantly the carriages were sold off! A similar one is still going strong in Vienna, Austria and features in the classic 1930s film The Third Man!
Author's paperweight souvenir showing Blackpool Winter Garden's Big Wheel. One of the Winter Gardens glass domes is visible on the left of the image. (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
In the 1930s when other Winter Gardens were being demolished, the one at Blackpool had a makeover.
J.C Derham was hired to do the construction, while Andrew Mazzei, who worked as an art director for the Gaumont Film Company was responsible for the decoration.
His rooms include the Spanish Hall, the Ye Galleon bar and the Jacobethan style Baronial Hall which look like they have wooden paneling and decoration but are actually made from fibrous plaster - a material used for making film sets and props.
Ye Galleon today (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
The Baronial Hall is now used as a wedding venue
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
Blackpool Council bought the Winter Gardens in 2010 in a £40 million pound deal. They have renovated a lot of the rooms inside which had fallen into disrepair.
They have made repairs to the Empress Ballroom roof and £1.8 million was spent on restoring the glorious Spanish Hall's roof.
The Spanish Hall's decoration includes depictions of Spanish villages
in plasterwork. Photo: Susan Brownrigg
Hopefully the Winter Garden's historic Pavilion Theatre will be next to be repaired.
Further up the coast, the surviving part of Morecambe Winter Gardens, originally the Victoria Pavilion Theare, is also currently being restored.
It is great that these important building are being preserved for the future.
Author Susan Brownrigg in the Empress Ballroom, Blackpool Winter Gardens during an open day (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)
Susan Brownrigg is the author of the Gracie Fairshaw mystery series set in 1930s Blackpool and Kintana and the Captain's Curse.
Most of my books are set
in my native Yorkshire, and knowing the landscape intimately, means I can
describe it with the love I have for it as well as the knowledge of its hills,
dales and coastline.
I use it as another
character in my books, not only through my lens as the narrator, but also
through my characters’ emotions and the action. I think it’s fair to say that place
holds a strong central position in most of my novels.
But as we’re Time
Tunnellers here, I’m going to talk about my Jiddy Vardy Historical Fiction
Trilogy which is set in Robin Hood’s Bay on the Yorkshire Coast.
So, I’ve been through
each book in the trilogy and tried to pick out how I use place in the story.
First though, a little
context:
Jiddy Vardy was a real-life
female smuggler in 1700’s Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire. Her mother was from
Naples and her father, an English aristocrat. Jiddy arrived in the Bay, as it’s
called locally, parentless, to be brought up by an elderly, childless couple.
The inspiration for this real-life
character came from a few pages about her in a local history book about
smuggling called A Rum Do! by local author, Patricia Labistour.
Jiddy is described as
tall, dark, beautiful, brave, strong and loyal. I thought she sounded like a
great character for a story and I was surprised practically no-one had heard
about her. I set out to rectify that. It’s my on-going mission! So please, help
spread the word!
So, armed with a great central
character, and a stunning location, and with all the researched smuggling
stories, I had the makings of some excellent material for the books.
The story is full of
action – smuggling – and the whys and development of this illicit trade opens
up discussions about the definition of crime, what leads some people to break
the law, and then questions about who should make laws, especially when those
who make them know nothing of local community needs and its people. It is also
a coming-of-age story, first love, women’s rights and choices and identity. So
many discussion topics!
However, it is also about
place. And that is what I want to talk about here.
Jiddy Vardy grows up in a
remote village with cottages higgledy piggledy clustered on a hill leading down
to the North Sea and its dangerous tides. Moorland and marshland cut it off
from much of the world and roads at this time were atrocious!
Perfect for clandestine activity.
Robin Hood's Bay viewed from the top
(photograph Ruth Estevez)
Robin Hood’s Bay bursts
into life as a character, not only because it is so fascinating and I love it,
but because for the story, it is a must.
I bring the place alive
as another character by various methods:
1)The narrator’s descriptions. That’s me! My
voice.
2)Through the eyes of different characters,
in particular Jiddy.
3)Linking the descriptions to what is going
on in the action.
4)Jiddy’s emotions. How the descriptions of
her environment mirror her mood. (A bit like Thomas Hardy does with the weather
in novels such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles)
5)How the landscape affects characters and
how it forms them. (If they lived somewhere else, would they be different
people?)
I also use personification
in my descriptions through adjectives and verbs. This brings the landscape
alive by giving it human or animal attributes.
Using verbs for example
from book 1:
a)The causeway lolled empty.
(The causeway is an
extension of the road reaching out onto the beach)
Lolled suggests
a place where no action is happening, it’s without purpose, an area at rest
which is what I wanted in this scene. At other times, it is full of activity.
b)The cliff meandering green and
brown.
We
think of people meandering as they walk, weaving a path, so the image is of a
cliff not in a straight line, taking a stroll.
c)Wavesroar, they trip
over themselves, a scurryof waves.
These
show the sea with a personality, behaving like a human.
d)The silver sky shivered cold.
Again,
the sky taking on human actions.
Looking
at a place through a character’s eyes, for example Jiddy, when she looks at the
village, the adjectives show her mood as she views it. She is unsettled by an
event that has just happened and she looks at the place she knows well with
that unsettled eye:
Steps, Robin Hood's Bay (Photograph Ruth Estevez)
Out
in the ginnels and lanes, buildings hemmed her in, bairns whined,
dogs yelped, nets tangled, beating, slapping, the suffocating
stench of fish and mould and the sight of pinched eyes and red, flaking
knuckles.
All
the adjectives and verbs are unpleasant. Verbs like whining, yelping, beating,
slapping, they are all threatening, and Jiddy feels the buildings are holding
her in. This passage is taken from book 3, Full Sail and shows her state of
mind as she views her surroundings.
The voice of the narrator
(me!) is also used. Here, we can talk about including the senses in description
as well. If we used it all the time though, I think we’d put the reader on
overload! So, it’s choosing where to use it and which sense at a certain time.
Certainly not all at once.
I tend to use the senses
in places that are alien to my characters to show they are on higher alert than
usual. For example, when Jiddy arrives in an opulent department store, I use
sounds, sight and smell.
Marble counters bounced
back sound. A clock ticked…the scent of animal pelts, rose water and musk
mingled…fabrics fell in folds, frills and tucks. The room exploded with dresses,
ornaments, shining objects.,,the wealth grew heavier. Lights shone brighter.
Glass gleamed sharper. (Book 3, Full Sail.)
It’s dazzling,
overwhelming. Ominous in the ‘heavier’ and ‘sharper.’ And I don’t feel
description has to be realistic either, I like it used to give a sense of a
place and atmosphere, rather than it always being logical. But that comes down
to personal style as well. A writer just needs to be consistent in this and
that it suits the story.
Description can also be
used to make comparisons between places: the new versus the familiar.
For example, when Jiddy
arrives in York (in book 3), she compares the size of the Minster (the huge
church in the centre of the city) to the height of the cliffs she knows at
Ravenscar. She can only describe something new through something familiar.
Ravenscar (Photograph by Ruth Estevez)
So, there are many ways
to make a place a character in your writing and I hope these examples
illustrate the way I use it and perhaps, you may want try these out as well.
My challenge is for you
to describe a place in one or a mixture of these methods. You can personify a
building or a forest, or the sea, for example. Use adjectives and verbs to
personify the place. Or compare
somewhere new through familiar buildings and landscape. Show us the mood of the
onlooker through the verbs and adjectives you use. Above all, have fun!
Thanks to the Time
Tunnellers team for inviting me onto the blog today. Happy writing!
Ruth Estevez is the author of six novels, including the Jiddy Vardy trilogy, which is inspired by a real-life female smuggler from Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire. She is a semi-finalist in the BBNYA Awards 2023 and was the Guest Speaker in the Cheshire Prize for Literature 2023.
Ruth has previously worked as a scriptwriter on the children’s TV series Bob the Builder and worked in theatre and TV from Opera North, Harrogate Theatre-in-Education Company, Pitlochry Festival Theatre to ITV’s Emmerdale. She has taught scriptwriting on the Contemporary BA Film and Television Degree Course at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Ruth is also Project Coordinator for the Portico Sadie Massey awards for Young Readers and Writers, based at The Portico Library in Manchester.
I have long has an interest in Mary, Queen of Scots. For any teachers tackling Mary in the classroom, I have created comprehensive teaching resources for The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, free to download HERE.
The tragic queen was born at Linlithgow Palace on the 8th of December 1542, barely three weeks after Scotland's defeat to the English at the Battle of Solway Moss. Below, I am pictured with her statue at Linlithgow. Sadly, her life was to get more complicated still.
When little Mary was six days old, her Father James V of Scots reportedly turned his face to the wall and died. Allegedly, he said:'It began with a lass and it will gang with a lass.', referring to his disappointment that his family line was not to carry on through a male heir. Aged 9 months, Mary was officially crowned at Stirling Castle, pictured below.
However, her life was to become even more challenging: King Henry VIII of England had insisted that his own son Edward and Mary should be wed, an arrangement ratified in the Treaty of Greenwich. However, the regent in Scotland, the Earl of Arran, renounced the treaty, ushering in the prologued period of violent confrontation known as the 'Rough Wooing'. Five-year-old Mary was whisked off to France and, as a teenager, married to the French Crown Prince, her childhood playmate. Hoever, that stability and happiness was soon to be at an end: her husband inherited the French crown but died soon thereafter, leaving Mary widowed and without a purpose at the French court. She was persuaded to return to Scotland.
However, Scotland was not the country she had left behind. The Catholic Mary was returning to a now Protestant Scotland. Influential preachers like John Knox had persuaded many influential noblemen to become Protestants, including Mary's half-brother and closest advisor James Stewart. From the very beginning of her reign, John Knox tried to stir up trouble for Mary.
As a writer, I was particularly interested in this newly arrived 18-year-old Queen Mary. She certainly didn't have her troubles to seek, but she appears to have had considerable charm and vivacity, travelling across Scotland on lengthy progress journeys and indulging in dancing, riding, hunting and hawking. I found myself particularly fascinated by Mary's love of falconry and decided to make my boy hero an apprentice falconer. This necessicated some research, both theoretical...
...and practical.
Particular mention is made of Mary's merlins for which she had a particular fondness. A merlin is Britain's smallest bird of prey, but more than capable of hunting and supplying the Palace kitchens with larks, for example.
I discovered that the Catholic Earl of Huntly became a formidable foe when Mary did not back his wishes for a counter-reformation to reinstate Catholicism. On her progress north in the summer of 1562, she snubbed the Ear's invitation to visit his castle at Huntly, then called Strathbogie. Here I am, visiting its ruin.
Mary was probably wise not to trust the Earl - rumour had it that he planned to kidnap the Queen and marry her forcibly to his son. Instead, Mary bypassed his castle and gathered support to finally defeat the Earl at the Battle of Corrichie, fought in Aberdeenshire in October 1562. Mary was victorious.
It is true that in the years to come, Mary made some very questionable choices, particularly when it came to the men she chose to trust. However, she also had more than her fair share of bad luck and unfair treatment at the hands of others. In The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, I hope that I can portray a different, more hopeful side of the tragic queen: a fun-loving, considerate, charismatic, thoughtful and energetic go-getter, a teenager who is all too often judged too harshly. Whatever the truth, Mary's iconic status and hold on the imagination is set to continue, as this recent exhibition on her cultural legacy shows.
Barbara Henderson is the award-winning author of eleven books. Her new title, The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, is out from Luath Press now. Find out more about Barbara at www.barbarahenderson.co.uk.
