How Southend illuminations helped town beat rival resorts

From the 1930s until 2007 it was a seaside town renowned for its adornment of dazzling decorations.

Decades ago the seafront must have had a genuine air of enchantment and magic about it during the summer and autumn season.

The pier – once so wonderfully magnetic to visitors -was spectacularly lit with strings of bulbs and great set pieces.

There were more set pieces and illuminated tableaux on the foreshore, in the cliffs’ gardens, and especially in the stretch on the seafront then known as Never Never Land.

Even the Cliffs Bandstand, the remnant of which are now situated in Priory Park, was lit up every night during the long tourism season.

The row over whether to bring back the lights, modernise and enhance them, or to scrap them altogether, has been rumbling on for decades.

In 1948, three years after the war had ended and when times were tough indeed, even though some blackout restrictions continued, Southend Council leaders voted to keep the street lights on until 1am.

Part of this decision was as an anti-crime measure but council leaders also wanted the move because it helped lift the gloom and remind residents of how spectacular the seafront once was, before the war began.

In the 1960s and 1970s there was bickered back and forth over the illuminations. Many voices wanted to hark back to the glorious 1930s heyday of ‘the lure of the lights’. For others the rising cost of the illuminations, alongside Southend’s diminishing popularity as a resort, just wasn’t worth the money.

Former Echo editor Jim Worsdale brilliantly described what the appeal of the lights had meant to him: “In those earlier years, before extensive private car ownership, The Lights, the Kursaal, and the Pier were major magnets,” he said.

“When The Lights were on there would be rows and rows of closely-packed coaches in the Kursaal car park, in the shadow of the huge rides in the amusements park.

“Friendly arguments were overheard or appeared in print, over whether the much older Blackpool Illuminations, dating from the late 19th century, were better than those of upstart Southend. Blackpool had its famous, lit-up Tower. Southend, of course, had its world-renowned Pier.

“We who knew Our Town of yesteryear can look back and tell ourselves it was truly wonderful, way back then. But life and times and technology have advanced apace. Yesterday is no more.”

The year 1935 was the first time Southend Council decided to really go to town with the illuminations along the seafront. And boy, did they go to town.

They spent £20,000 - a huge sum in those days - on that year’s seasonal illuminations. Their efforts led to a 40-foot-long “floating gondola of light” fitted with more than 600 lamplights being moored off the seafront, while giant illuminated flowers, gnomes, goblins and prehistoric-looking animals were added to the Shrubbery – the land opposite Royal Terrace.

There were all kinds of weird and wonderful twinkling lights lining the seafront. The problem was the lights would become a victim of their own success - they were too appealing.

It got to the point there was chaos and gridlock along the seafront for a number of successive evenings.

“Southend’s great influx of cars,” was the headline in the Southend Pictorial newspaper, as the illuminations brought tourists from all over to Southend - just as the council had hoped. But nobody had expected the thousands of motorists who turned up to see the lights

“The influx began before darkness fell, continuous streams of cars entering by the Arterial Road and the London Road,” reported the newspaper.

“Some of those who arrived at the height of the congestion took over an hour to travel the length of the promenades and the drivers were too busily occupied to see much of the decorations.”

At one point there was absolute gridlock near the Kursaal and on Pier Hill. Dozens of police officers were called in to try to control the traffic and many drivers just gave up and tried to turn back.

The vibrant decorations were such a success they were indeed said to rival those of Blackpool. Special evening coach trips were laid on from Liverpool Street in London to cater for extra swarms of day-trippers throughout the summer.

On one weekend in August alone so many people who had come to see the lights were left queuing at Southend Railway Station that a riot broke out. As travellers rushed the barriers all hell broke loose, resulting in a number of women fainting.

In the Southend newspapers the shrubbery creatures were described as “the strangest monsters that the earth has ever brought forth in a dry summer.”

“They have given the area such an air of un-reality that its has been re-christened Never Never Land.” Among the creatures was a three-foot-long bright green duck installed below the ‘waterfall’ in the shrubbery which was so striking it actually scared away birds from the water pool.

Other illuminations included a ‘Red Riding Hood’ tableau below the bandstand and ‘the Pulpit’– a flood lighting effect on the Cliffs as well as a Little Bo Peep tableaux on the seafront.

Another big hit was the ‘pillar of light’ illumination on Western Esplanade. Made up of a tower of cones of diminishing sizes, the spectacle was fitted with 400 lamps with colour schemes changing every few seconds.

Politician and journalist Sir Harry Brittain was invited to the town as the VIP guest to officially switch on the new lights just in time to kick off carnival week.

The planning for the 1935 illuminations had been months, possibly even years in the making.

The planning documents for the illuminations that year could actually be described as a thing of beauty, as you can see in our photo gallery.

Colourful blueprints, drawn up more than 85 years ago for the 1935 season, were given to Philip Miller MBE, the CEO of Adventure Island, some years ago and Mr Miller shared them with the Echo back in 2015.

The eight-page plan, on fading paper, was given to him by friend Arthur Wright CBE – son of Southend’s first borough engineer. Arthur had kept the plans for decades, before passing them on to Philip.

“They are so clearly of another time – an age of innocence,” said Philip back in 2015. “The drawings are pieces of art in themselves.”