With summer rapidly drawing to a close and the nights cutting in, we take one last nostalgic look at a North East seaside scene from yesteryear.
Our two views from more than 110 years apart show the Longsands at Tynemouth looking south. Our older photograph from around 1910 comes courtesy of Summerhill Books. The modern image was captured during the summer of 2022.
Tynemouth Railway Station had opened in 1882, and from late Victorian times onwards, daytrippers would flock from industrial Tyneside, and holidaymakers from further afield, to the coast every year during the summer months. Back in 1910, we see the beach busy with people - all fully clothed - and all the accoutrements of a typical day at the Edwardian seaside: huts selling Fry's Cocoa, the 'shuggy boats', and a row of 'bathing machines'.
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These walled wooden carts were rolled in and out of the sea. They had been introduced in the 19th century to protect the modesty of bathers as somewhere people could get changed in private before stepping into the water.
One obvious feature missing from the 1910 photograph is Tynemouth Outdoor Pool, which would not open until the summer of 1925. Terraces were designed to hold up to 2,000 people, while visitors could hire tents to use as changing rooms. It would host regular swimming galas and competitions, and for decades was a magnet for thousands in the summer.
Over time, however, with the rise of foreign holidays, the opening of a nearby indoor pool, fewer outdoor bathers, and the mounting cost of cleaning and repairs, the open-air pool was finally closed in the mid-1990s. We see it derelict and forlorn in our 2022 photograph.
Overlooking the Longsands, meanwhile, is the unmissable landmark that is the Grand Hotel. The building has recently been marking its 150th anniversary. It was originally built as a summer residence for the Duchess of Northumberland in 1872, before being converted into a hotel five years later.
By the turn of the 20th century, Tynemouth was promoting itself as a spa town, and the Grand was advertising itself as having “28 bedrooms, bathrooms and liveries, hot and cold water and salt supplies”. Famous guests over the decades include, most notably, Laurel and Hardy, as well as Vera Lynn, Stanley Baker, Margaret Rutherford, Dave Allen, Mike and Bernie Winters, Sir Bobby Robson, Bob Geldof, and, more recently, rising North Shields rock superstar Sam Fender.
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