Winter Gardens Trust secretary and Blackpool Council’s head of Planning & Heritage, Carl Carrington presents a short architectural history of the venue recorded for the Blackpool Museum project.
The Opera House
The Empress Ballroom
The Arena
The Spanish Hall
The Baronial Hall
The Renaissance Room
The Pavilion Theatre & Horseshoe
The Derham Lounge
Olympia
The Floral Lounge
The Floral Hall
The Grand Foyer
The Winter Gardens Conference Centre
In 2009 the Trust supported publication of “Winter Gardens Blackpool – The Most Magnificent Palace of Amusement in the World.” written by Professor Vanessa Toulmin, Director of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield and a great ambassador for Blackpool.
In 2015 The Winter Gardens Trust funded a second edition re-print of the book to incorporate the many changes and improvements made by Blackpool Council between 2009 and 2012.
The Blackpool Conference and Exhibition Centre is a new, purpose built events venue and the first major building development to happen on the Winter Gardens complex since construction of the Opera House in 1939.
The new building includes two floors plus a mezzanine and offers direct linkages into the Empress Ballroom.
Enquiries about events at the new centre should be made direct to the Winter Gardens.
In 2018, Blackpool Council received a grant of £500k towards the re-glazing and repair of the Spanish Hall roof. This was a significant contribution towards the overall cost of £1.2m for which Blackpool Council provided £700k of match funding. The Council was able to use the scaffolding put in place for the roof repairs to survey and repair damaged plasterwork and replace the lost cloud panel ceiling.
More importantly, from the Trust’s viewpoint, the process of restoring the wrought iron chandeliers has begun – the Winter Gardens Trust contributed a grant of £12k for this as part of the overall works programme.
All six chandeliers were repaired and re-wired and the original glass was supplemented by matching glass where panes had been broken.
The images show the roof covering as seen from Blackpool Tower; some of the plasterwork and members of Historic England during one of their visits to see how work was progressing.