This film is part of Free
Blackpool Promenade Extension (1905)
Edwardian holidaymakers stroll along the seafront as work continues on Blackpool's new promenade.
Overview
The crowds visiting Blackpool during the Easter of 1905 reached record heights. The resort town had become the holiday destination for the less well-off, who savoured their new leisure time. While Mitchell and Kenyon's films usually tried to cram the frame with faces, this one is as interested in the building work as it is in the teeming holidaymakers and the local market.
The Blackpool Times waxed especially lyrical on the town's success: "It is surprising how much Blackpool is appreciated by visitors, and how the sea has a charm for them all of its own... It is truly emancipation; and when sunny memories of happy, though brief, holidays crowd in upon them, can one wonder that these thousands of our industrial community should flock to Blackpool, there to renew old, or maybe to create new, association whose brightness will serve to illumine many a weary hour". The extension of Blackpool promenade had begun in 1894 and would extend as far as the South Pier, which opened in the same year.
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