Claremont Park Estate Blackpool

The creation and expansion of the resort towns of the Lancashire and North Wales coasts required outside capital, capital that was only to be found in the industrial areas of south Lancashire. A common feature of many such developments from Colwyn Bay to Blackpool was the involvement of the Manchester business community, financiers and architects.   Development of Blackpool’s North Shore began in 1863 when the Blackpool Land & Building Company created the Claremont Park Estate. An area north of Talbot Square was laid out as a private estate of hotels and houses. Roads, drainage and sewerage were provided and, in 1867, work started on the Imperial Hotel. Including the cost of the hotel, a total of £20,000 was expended, the Whiteside family acting as principal contractors and excavators for the works.  Carlton Terrace, Regent Terrace and Lansdowne Crescent, built in 1884, were also part of the Claremont Park estate while the Royal Edward Hotel, previously called the Park Hotel and Claremont Hotel, may have been promoted by the company.  Promoters of The Blackpool Land Building & Hotel Company included Sir Benjamin Heywood Bart, Claremont Salford, James Heywood FRS, Palace Gardens, etc. Claremont, the name chosen for the new estate reflected the name of the Heywood home in Salford. The Heywood family already owned a house known as West Hey in Blackpool. This was sold for the Blackpool Aquarium and Menagerie which opened in 1874. It is now the site of Blackpool Tower.

As part of the development, the Company created a carriage road along the cliffs and erected toll houses at each end of the estate. The main toll house was at a spot between Carlton Terrace and Lansdown Crescent on the seaward side of the road. The toll to go from Talbot Square to the Gynn was 1d for pedestrians, children under the age of 12 free, 3d for a weekly ticket and 3d for carriages. There was a further toll house at the Gynn end of Claremont Park Road or Drive. In 1882, permission was granted for omnibuses to run along the carriage road and in 1889, Blackpool Corporation finally took over the Park Road and abolished the toll. However, the Company was still in existence in 1923, having built up a substantial holding of land. The Sea Water Company and Baths owned by the first mayor of Blackpool, W.H. Cocker, purchased land from the company as did Warley Street Congregational Church. The activities of the Blackpool Land, Building and Hotel Company made a clear difference to the social tone of the resort as a whole by providing a controlled, quiet enclave with some architectural pretensions on the North Shore, where 'better class' residents and visitors could keep their distance from the trippers when they so choose. The Company was registered in January 1863 to develop a thin but lengthy strip of coastal land which had been pieced together through various purchases. Five of its promoters came from Blackpool but most of the capital was invested from Manchester. The leading lights were the Galloway family who ran a well-known engineering works and had also invested in Southport. The building of Lansdowne Crescent, Blackpool's first and for many years its only sea front crescent, was entrusted to a Southport builder rather than a local man. The stone fronted four storey houses had their surroundings safeguarded by prohibitions on offensive trades and by the imposition of a penny toll to pass across the greensward between the crescent and the sea. Viewed in the wider context of English resort development this was not an architecturally inspiring initiative, but the Crescent was superior to anything else in Blackpool at the time.

The development of Claremont Park estate was not an immediate success and the directors of the company each had to build a house on the estate in order to stimulate sales. Eventually the new estate attracted many wealthy purchasers who appreciated its exclusiveness and its proximity to the new pier and assembly rooms. All this confirmed an emergent trend for the North Shore to become the 'best end' of Blackpool, although this relatively elevated status did not extend very far inland, as small terraced houses soon pressed close to the rear of Claremont Park, as the Land Company's estate became known. The rush of early development here was not sustained beyond the 1860s, however, and we shall see that the local authority had to rescue the Land Company by providing expensive sea defences when erosion became a problem towards the turn of the century. Together with the building of relatively up market terraces of houses at South Shore, at the other end of the sea front, these North Shore developments helped to sustain Blackpool's middle class holiday season through the mid- Victorian years when it was still the best paying proposition for the town.

Reference    Manchester Guardian, 7 January 1863. Page 1 Col 3.
Reference    Clarke, Allen: The Story of Blackpool Palatine Book Co. Blackpool. 1923 County History Reprints 1969
Parry, Keith    Resorts of the Lancashire Coast    David & Charles 1983