Blackpool Tower

The Blackpool Tower Company was founded in 1890 by the London-based Standard Contract & Debenture Corporation, which bought an aquarium on Central Promenade from its owner William Cocker with the intention of raising a replica of the Eiffel Tower on the site. John Bickerstaffe, a former mayor of Blackpool, was asked to chair the new company, and its shares went on sale in July 1891; the prospectus took up the whole of page 6 of The Financial Times of 25 July 1891. The Standard Corporation kept 30,000 one-pound shares and offered £150,000 worth to the public, but only two-thirds were taken up at first, and the company had to go back to its existing shareholders for more cash. Its finances were poor, the falling share price made them worse, and it reached the point of being unable to pay its creditors. To keep the venture from collapsing Bickerstaffe bought up whatever shares were available until an original holding of £500 had grown to £20,000, and he released the Standard Corporation from its share commitments.

Two Lancashire architects, James Maxwell and Charles Tuke, designed the tower and oversaw the laying of its foundation stone on 29 September 1891; a time capsule had been buried under that stone on 25 September. Neither man saw the work finished, as both had died by the time the tower opened on 14 May 1894. Heenan & Froude, then of Manchester, were appointed structural engineers and supplied and built the tower itself, its electric lighting and the steel front pieces for the aquariums, using a new system of hydraulic riveting based on technology from Fielding & Platt of Gloucester. Five million Accrington bricks, 3,478 long tons of steel and 352 long tons of cast iron went into the tower and its base, and the design and construction of tower and buildings together cost about £290,000. From the ground to the flagpole at the summit the structure measures 518 feet 9 inches.

The first members of the public to reach the top were local journalists, who went up the constructors' ladders in September 1893. When the tower opened to paying visitors on 14 May 1894 it was the tallest man-made structure in the British Empire, and 3,000 customers took the first rides to the top that day. Admission cost sixpence, a ride in the lifts another sixpence, and the circus a third sixpence on top of that. The tower's success justified the investment of nearly £300,000, and the company made a £30,000 profit in 1896.

William Cocker's Aquarium, Aviary and Menagerie had stood on the site since 1873, and it was kept open to earn revenue while the tower building went up around it. It then became one of the tower's major attractions in its own right. The aquarium was modelled on the limestone caverns of Derbyshire and housed 57 species of freshwater and saltwater fish, the largest tank holding 32,000 litres of salt water. The menagerie and aviary, which included lions, tigers and polar bears, were regarded as one of the finest collections in the country.

The Tower Circus sits at the base of the structure between its four legs, and the building that houses it hides the tower's base from view. It opened to the public on the same day as the tower, 14 May 1894, with admission from sixpence, and it has not missed a season since. Frank Matcham designed the present interior, which was completed in 1900. The ring can be lowered into a pool of water for water finales, one of four rings left in the world able to do that. The clown Charlie Cairoli appeared at the tower for 39 years, the ringmaster Norman Barrett worked the ring for 25, and Henry Lytton Jr was ringmaster from 1954 to 1965. Animals appeared in the ring until 1990. The circus was to close at the end of that season and be replaced by an animatronic attraction, but public opinion and the fact that the animatronics were not ready kept it running, and since 1992 it has been produced and directed by the Endresz family.

The menagerie lasted until 1973, when it was closed following the opening of Blackpool Zoo near Stanley Park. Its space and the roof gardens were turned over in 1977 to an indoor children's playground, Jungle Jim's, which closed in 2019. The aquarium survived longer, closing in 2010 after the management contract for the tower went to Merlin Entertainments, which also ran the nearby Sea Life Centre; the Blackpool Dungeon took its place.

The first ballroom, the Tower Pavilion, opened in August 1894 at the front of the complex and was smaller than the room that replaced it. The Tower Ballroom was commissioned by the Tower company in response to the opening of the Empress Ballroom at the Winter Gardens, built between 1897 and 1898 to designs by Frank Matcham, who also designed the Blackpool Grand Theatre, and opened in 1899. Its sprung floor is laid from 30,602 blocks of mahogany, oak and walnut, and above the stage runs the line "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear", taken from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. Dancing was not allowed on Sundays at first, and sacred music was played instead. The house rules were strict, among them that "Gentlemen may not dance unless with a Lady" and that "Disorderly conduct means immediate expulsion".

The first Wurlitzer organ was installed in 1929 and replaced in 1935 by one designed by Reginald Dixon, resident organist from 1930 until his retirement in 1970 and known worldwide as Mr Blackpool. Ernest Broadbent succeeded him in 1970 and retired through ill health in 1977. Phil Kelsall, who had started at the tower in the circus in 1975, became resident organist in the ballroom in 1977 and was appointed MBE in 2010 for services to music, as Dixon had been. Resident dance bands have included Bertini and his band and Charlie Barlow, with shorter residencies for the Eric Delaney Band and the Mike James Band. Under the management of Leisure Parcs and the direction of the bandleader Greg Francis, the Blackpool Tower Big Band was reformed in 2001 after an absence of 25 years, and the Empress Orchestra became resident in 2005 alongside a smaller Empress Dance Band. The tower's orchestrion is now in the collection of Thinktank, the Birmingham science museum.

Fire damaged the ballroom in December 1956, destroying the dance floor and the restaurant underneath it. Restoration took two years and cost £500,000, with many of the original designers and builders coming out of retirement to help, and the restaurant reopened as the Tower Lounge, which closed in 2014 and has since reopened as a fish and chip restaurant. The BBC televised Come Dancing from the ballroom for many years, and the room has hosted editions of Strictly Come Dancing, including the grand finals of the second and ninth series on 11 December 2004 and 17 December 2011. The Blackpool Junior Dance Festival, billed as "Open to the World", has been held there every year since 1964, and the World Modern Jive Championships are held there annually.

On 22 December 1894 the Norwegian ship Abana, sailing from Liverpool to Savannah, Georgia, was caught in a storm and mistook the newly built tower for a lighthouse. She was first seen off North Pier, drifted to Little Bispham and was wrecked there, where she can still be seen at low tide; her bell hangs in St Andrews Church in Cleveleys. In 1897 the top of the tower caught fire, and the burning platform was visible from up to 50 miles away.

The structure was not painted properly during its first thirty years and corroded badly enough for demolition to be discussed. The decision went the other way, and all the steelwork in the structure was replaced and renewed between 1920 and 1924. In 1940, during the Second World War, the crow's nest was removed so that the tower could be used as a Royal Air Force radar station known as RAF Tower, which proved unsuccessful. A post box was opened at the top in 1949, and the hydraulic lifts were replaced in 1956 and 1957, when the winding gear was converted to an electric motor.

The Bickerstaffe family owned the tower until 1964, when the Blackpool Tower Company was sold to EMI. It passed afterwards to Trust House Forte, to the First Leisure Corporation, and to Leisure Parcs Ltd, owned by Trevor Hemmings. In 1973 the Tower Buildings, comprising the tower, the circus, the ballroom and the roof garden, were designated a Grade I listed building.

The top was painted silver in 1977 as part of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee celebrations. A giant model of King Kong was placed on the side of the tower in 1984, and in 1985 the escapologist Karl Bartoni and his bride were married suspended from it in a cage. The lifts and winding gear were replaced again in 1992, the year the complex was renamed Tower World and opened by Diana, Princess of Wales. The tower is usually painted dark red, but for its centenary in 1994 abseiling painters put it in gold. A glass floor panel called the Walk of Faith, two sheets of laminated glass two inches thick and weighing half a tonne, opened at the top in 1998 and was superseded in 2011 by the larger Skywalk. A laser beam installed for the annual Illuminations in October 2007 could be seen 30 miles away and was criticised by the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, presenter of The Sky at Night, who said: "The Blackpool Tower light is certainly something I do not think we should be doing. I very much oppose it." The centre for astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston said the laser had added to a spiralling problem for astronomy.

In March 2010 it was announced that Blackpool Council had bought the tower, with the Merlin Entertainment Group managing it and adding attractions including a Dungeon and a new observation deck, the Blackpool Tower Eye, which carried that name from September 2011 until early 2026 before reverting to the Blackpool Tower Top. At 380 feet it is the highest observation deck in North West England. The tower was evacuated on 12 December 2021 after reports of smoke, which the fire service traced to an electrical fault in a neighbouring property. On 28 December 2023 flames were reported close to the top at around 14:15; Lancashire Fire & Rescue answered with six fire engines, a drone team and rope rescue, supported by a National Police Air Service helicopter, and by around 16:30 the flames had turned out to be orange netting blowing in the wind. In 2025 it was announced that the tower would be taken over from Merlin Entertainments and run by Blackpool Council through a new company, Blackpool Tourism Ltd, from August, with the Blackpool Dungeons continuing under a franchise agreement with Merlin.