From the colourful lido at Weston-super-Mare to the surreal world of Blobbyland, these popular UK attractions once thrilled and delighted their patrons. Then rents were raised or tastes changed and they fell out of favour. Now they lie abandoned, repurposed or worse, demolished – the laughter, screams and cheers they once evoked a mere memory. Do you remember these British holiday icons?
Once a Victorian masterpiece, this impressive glass and steel structure was built in 1851 in London’s Hyde Park to host ‘The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations’. It was later moved to Penge Place, in the south of the capital, where it remained for 82 years. In the palace's heyday, its grounds were home to a mind-boggling array of delights: a roller coaster, festivals, cricket matches and even a garden complete with model dinosaurs.
Tragically, the building was destroyed by a fire in 1936 – it’s still not known how the fire was started and whether or not it was intentional. Currently, remnants of the palace, including terraces, sphinxes and a huge bust of its designer, Sir Joseph Paxton, can be seen at what is now known as Crystal Palace Park.
Promising sweeping greenery, unique views of the city and a breathtaking light exhibition at its centre, the Mound was meant to be a manifestation of Westminster Council’s vision of ‘a greener, smarter future’. Covered in grass and trees, the 82-foot-high (25m) viewpoint promised to bring the experience of ‘the great outdoors’ to the heart of the city. A snip at £6 million ($8.15 million), the council believed.
Sadly, the Mound did not live up to the hype. Visitors declared that the views at the end of the 130-step pathway were underwhelming and that the promised light exhibition at its centre was barely more than a storeroom for hand sanitiser and unused signs. The owners began giving tickets away for free and soon the decision was made to shut the attraction down. Officials pointed out that the Mound was only ever meant to be a temporary attraction. Many people wondered why it was built in the first place.
Opening in 2005 at the Isle of Wight's Blackgang Chine theme park, the Cliffhanger was the only roller coaster on the island. The popular ride, which soared above the coastline and provided views across the sea to The Needles, gained a lot of fans during its 18-year run, many of whom will be disappointed to hear that the ride closed down at the end of October 2022.
Fans needn't have worried though, as in spring 2023, Blackgang Chine unveiled a new attraction to take the Cliffhanger’s place and which it hopes will become just as beloved. Called Extinction, it is a 360-degree pendulum swing that takes riders 59 feet (18m) up into the air, with a location that sees you teeter off the edge of a cliff.
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Today, Brighton’s larger and better-known Palace Pier is a beloved attraction, but just along the coastline you’ll find the skeletal remains of an older pier. Opened in 1866, during the Victorian boom for seaside holidays, the West Pier featured a concert hall, funfair and tearoom. It was extremely popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The West Pier went into financial decline in the 1960s, before closing in 1975 and falling into disrepair. It partly collapsed due to a storm in early 2003, and caught fire that March in a suspected act of arson. Despite being mostly destroyed, the hollowed-out structure makes for a spooky yet beautiful silhouette for photographers.
Tucked away in the sleepy Somerset town of Cricket St Thomas, Crinkley Bottom was a theme park created by entertainer Noel Edmonds following the success of his British TV show, Noel’s House Party. It was based around an existing wildlife park on the Cricket House country estate and featured a range of attractions based on Mr Blobby, a popular character on the show. It soon became simply known as ‘Blobbyland’.
Blobbyland was billed as 'Britain's first TV leisure park'. It was opened in 1994, but by 1997 interest was dwindling in the same way it was for the TV show. The park was closed but became popular again with urban explorers, who’d break into the site to explore Dunblobbin', Mr Blobby’s surreal house. The owners blocked up the access tunnel and in 2014 the site was finally demolished.
Check out more historic photos of theme parks in their heyday
The Duke of Lancaster was a former railway steamer passenger ship that operated in Europe from 1956 to 1979. When it was decommissioned it was towed to Llanerch-y-Mor in North Wales to become ‘The Fun Ship’, a floating leisure and retail complex where people could play arcade games, pump money into slot machines, enjoy a drink on the deck and eat in restaurants. The dream was that it would become one of the region’s top tourist attractions.
Sadly, that was not to be. Long-running legal battles with the local council saw the ship's owners walk away, selling the coin-operated machines to local arcade game collectors and leaving the ship to rot alongside Mostyn Docks. Recently an anarchist group called Dudug were granted permission by the owners to paint the ship, with the aim of transforming it into an open-air art gallery.
The Wigan Casino was a nightclub in the heart of Lancashire that became the place to go for Northern Soul music in England. Young people descended from all over the country to hear tracks from the genre's latest artists and dance along to them. The queues to get in were always long but the dance floor on the second floor, Mr M's, kept pumping out the hits until 6am for Northern Soul all-nighters.
Wigan Casino shut down in 1981 and today the Grand Arcade shopping centre stands in its place. The Casino Café on the first floor is a nod to the site’s illustrious past and displays memorabilia from the time. Northern Soul all-nighters are still held regularly in the shopping centre, after hours of course, offering the surreal sight of Northern Soul aficionados in their high-waisted trousers dancing to ‘stompers’ in front of stores such as TK Maxx.
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Once marking the entrance to London’s bustling Euston train station, this eponymous arch was built in 1837. Designed by British architect Philip Hardwick, it was meant to resemble a propylaea, or Greek gateway, and included four grand sandstone pillars with bronze gates behind them. However, following the city’s rapid development over the next century, it began to be dwarfed as hotels and high-rises sprung up around it.
The grand entranceway was destroyed in the 1960s, despite public backlash. The demolition was carried out by hand without explosives, meaning remnants of the arch have survived, including its grand gates which are on display at the National Railway Museum in York. Despite a campaign to rebuild it, the Euston Arch shows no sign of returning anytime soon.
The Queen’s Highcliffe Hotel in Cliftonville, Margate has gone through a number of incarnations in its lifetime. For a while it was a Butlins Hotel, catering for families. Then in the 1960s it was bought by a local businessman who repurposed the swimming pool to be a dolphinarium, where dolphins and sea lions performed for audiences.
In the late 1970s, the Queen's Dolphinarium was closed, as new zoo licensing laws deemed the conditions for the dolphins cruel and unsustainable. Despite refurbishment of some of the facilities and an extensive advertising campaign directed at coach operators, the hotel became financially unviable. It was demolished in 2006 and an unremarkable block of units built on the spot in 2019.
The iconic Nemesis ride at Alton Towers opened in the Forbidden Valley area of the theme park on 19 March 1994 and quickly became a firm favourite with visitors. It featured four inversions, and a drop height of 104 feet (31.7m), with riders experiencing 3.5 times the force of gravity on the one-minute and 20-second ride. It consistently ranked highly in Amusement Today's annual Golden Ticket Awards, one of only seven roller coasters to appear in the top 50 every year since the award's inception.
The Nemesis rattled off on its final ride on 6 November 2022. A mysterious sign appeared saying that it was closed by order of the Phalanx. It sounds sinister, but the reality is that the ride is being re-tracked, with the majority of the coaster’s track sections being replaced, including 89 of the 117 supports. The new and improved Nemesis is expected to open in the summer of 2024.
The Tropicana was a hugely popular lido, situated on the Bristol Channel coast in Weston-super-Mare. It was built in 1937 and for a time its art deco diving board was the highest in Europe, and its pool the largest one outdoors. Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia, famously swam there when he was living in England in exile. As part of its rebranding in 1982, enormous statues of fruit were put around the pool leading to the tag line: “It's fun and fruity. It's wet and wild".
In 2000, the Tropicana closed and a number of unsuccessful attempts were made to redevelop the site. From 21 August to 27 September 2015 it hosted Dismaland, a sinister twist on Disneyland, curated by the notorious street artist Banksy. The installation saw 150,000 visitors descend upon the former lido, bringing an estimated £20 million ($25m) in extra revenue for the town. Today the site has become a hub for live music, theatre, comedy, events and exhibitions.
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